Thursday 12 August 2004

Oo! An antisocial behaviour order. Well, then.

Brought to my attention by This Is True:

John Cash, heroin addict and burglar, managed to commit two hundred and sixty-two burglaries in a year. He would pose as a policeman or milkman in order to get into the houses of elderly, frail people, then mug them, the bastard. He's been sentenced to "seven" years in jail, which, this being the UK, he won't serve, and he has also been given the unprecedented punishment of a five-year antisocial behaviour order which bans him from entering any home in the country without permission. He's even been banned from phoning strangers without permission.

That was the problem; that was why he burgled: he had permission to do so. And now Judge Barrington Black has revoked that permission. Problem solved. All great ideas are obvious in retrospect, of course, but, when crime is no more — probably just a couple of years away now, in the light of this breakthrough — I certainly hope that the history books give Judge Black full credit for his genius.

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