How far should we be able to go to protect our homes and familes from intruders?

A hot topic in the national news recently centres on the issue of how far we can go in the UK, to protect our home and those we care about.

At the end of last month, millionaire businessman Munir Hussain managed to have a custodial sentence overturned and walked away with a suspended sentence after having beaten up an intruder who had not only burgled him, but also tied him and his family up and threatened to kill them.

Unfortunately for Walid Salem, who was one of three intruders and had an extensive criminal record, finished up worse off when Hussain managed to escape, alert his brother and attacked the criminal with a bat, leaving him with brain damage.

And of course, this has sparked off a lot of media attention over the issue of how far we should be allowed to go in such extreme circumstances.

One of the unconstant and unpredicatable problems is, though, how any of us would react having been subjected to such an ordeal. Would we be quite within our right to lose any sense of reason and go what might in retrospect seem to have been a bit too far?

I happen to know someone who almost found himself in a similar predicament, in his rented home in Hanley.

Just before Christmas, in what of course wasn't as horrific as the Hussains' ordeal, this friend of mine was burgled - twice in one night. Living in a shared house, he and his girlfriend had thought the noise from the first intrusion was simply a house-mate returning from a night out. But later on, the thieves who presumably had thought nobody was in, returned to scour all of the bedrooms for more goodies. Only in one of the rooms, were the terrified couple. Hearing a count of "one, two, three" my friend jumped and held the door with might instilled by pure adrenalin, stopping the burglars who, amid attempts to kick the door down, were eventually put off by his girlfriend's shouts that the police were already on their way.

Although they never got in in the end, it was a question of what 'could have happened' to the couple, who were left traumatised by the event.

Since, he has slept with a cricket bat under the bed, and moved house to an estate which he hopes is a lot more safe, because he never felt secure in his own home again.

For me, it is the incongruity of the crime and the punishment. These burglars were more likely smack-heads than 'professional' burglars, if their means of entry is anything to go by, which for my friends, made them potentially far more dangerous. If they did ever get caught, their count of small time burglary wouldn't take them away for a great deal of time meaning before you could say 'throw away the key', they would be out for another stretch of burlgary and intimidation.

The items stolen on the night were not the issue here. And the scars left by the event were not physical ones, but mental ones. It was the psychological effect that was important here. Two people were intimidated, scared to death by their encounter with a team of burglars who didn't have any qualms about who they came across. But unfortunately, there's no law against "scaring the shit" out of someone.

My friends were dealt a deal which made their lives a misery until they finally moved and started afresh. And this was forced upon them by a group of probable repeat offenders who, when they decide they want something in life, simply take it from those who have it, and don't give a damn about the consequences. So, if my good mate had had his cricket bat on that night, and the intruders had gotten through his bedroom door, wouldn't they have deserved to get it round their heads?