Bring back the old penal system

In his comment article 'Jumping the gun' (see [2000] Gazette, 11 May, 16), Stephen Wedd says: '...the law on self-defence works as it is.'This complacent view disregards the changes in the criminal law and penal system over the last half century in favour of burglars and other trespassers, which have coincided with heavy increases in crimes committed by burglars, housebreakers and those who have no qualms about damaging other people's property.According to Home Office statistics, there was 10 times as much crime in 1997 as in 1954.

There were more than 13 times as many burglaries and 167 times as many cases of criminal damage.

Since 1954, trespassers have acquired rights and a measure of protection they did not once have; it is no longer permissible to set man-traps, and there are no harsher punishments available than imprisonment in conditions ex-public schoolboys would compare favourably with school.It is not, of course, possible to prove a causal relationship between the relaxation of the severity of the law towards criminals and the increase in crime.

The only practicable way to find out would be to restore the old system for, say, five years and examine the consequences.There is ample political justification for doing this because the changes to the old system never had any popular support; they were introduced by the political elite of the day.The hostility in influential quarters to the very mention of restoring the old criminal law and penal system suggests that in those quarters the present crime rates are seen as an acceptable price to pay to maintain what is regarded as a socially enlightened policy towards crime and criminals.

JD Tunnicliffe (retired solicitor), Cambridge