I keep hearing people calling for the families of anyone convicted of the recent rioting to be thrown out of their social housing or council houses, and have benefits stopped. Even some politicians are joining in this crazy rhetoric.
This idea stinks of selective vengeance. You cannot mete out arbitrary collective punishment. It’s illegal, and it’s just not going to happen. Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions collective punishments are a war crime. Clearly this doesn’t fall under that serious category, but collective punishment, the punishment of a group of people because of the actions of one or a few, are immoral and usually completely counter-productive. We’ve all had a taste of it at the least destructive end of its scale and should have a rough idea about the injustice of collective punishment. Remember when our entire class was given extra homework or kept behind after school because of one or two people’s misbehaviour?
They can’t even legally do it
There is no way a council can make a family homeless unless a judge says they can, and there’s no way a judge would ever agree to throwing (maybe) a single mum, her 6 month old child, granny or grandad who live with them, an innocent 10 year old sibling etc. out on the street because one unruly teenager – who may even be violent and aggressive to the rest of his family – did something wrong. Even if they did, the council is immediately responsible for re-homing them so the whole idea is pathetic in its lack of sensibility.
Councils threatening to do so are pandering to public whims and just acting tough.
Another problem with this idea is that it punishes people who have committed exactly the same crimes totally differently.
Imagine a 23 year old unemployed man, living alone in social housing and on benefits. He gets convicted of looting some trainers during the riots. We take him to court, have him dealt with by either a fine or custodial sentence and then afterwards throw him out on the streets and cut off all his benefits? So now he’s wandering the streets with no home, and no money, little chance of getting a job and exceptionally angry. And that’s a good idea? Do we think he might curl up in a corner somewhere and quietly starve to death? Or maybe he might resort to armed robbery, burglary, mugging, drugs etc?
Take an identically 23 year old man who also entered the exact same shop and nicked some trainers too. This one works for himself and lives in his own house. You think it’s right that this one deserves to be dealt with in the courts but then left alone to get on with his relatively good life? Where’s the justice in punishing one person incredibly harshly, and not the other?
Hi Andy,
Just been on the e-petition that is asking for this to be discussed in parliament, it has reached over 200,000 signitures which means it must be discussed by the back benches. but heres a quote from their statement:
“In relation to social housing, it is already a ground for eviction if a tenant or a member of their family is involved in anti-social behaviour or criminal activity in their local neighbourhood. Ministers have encouraged social landlords to use these powers, and a number of local authorities have pledged to do so.”
Hi Lee: That’s designed for getting rid of problem families when they terrorise their local communities and constantly abuse or rob their neighbours. They only use it in extreme cases and after many warnings and a history of abuse. It was never intended to evict people who have committed “any” criminal act. If you commit a criminal act you go to court, get fined, get prison or get community service etc. – you do not lose your home.
Trying to twist this power round to justify condemning a whole family because of the behaviour of 1 member is perverse and outrageously unjust – and will never work. Robbing a shop in town during a riot is nothing to do with the anti-social behaviour those powers were meant to address.
They need to change the name of the petition to “Let’s single out all the people who rent houses and don’t have a job for extra severe punishment whilst letting all the others off”.
At least that way it would be clear that the motive of the people signing it is to kick the lower classes and people they see as beneath them in the social hierarchy. At least that would be honest.