A Pilgrim’s Digression

This story sounds like it ought to be in the Onion. A married couple in Great Britain have been forced to allow a criminal convicted of assault to serve his home detention in their house, after he falsely gave their address to the court as his home address. He wears a security tag and is confined to the home for the duration of his probation, a situation the wife describes as having “turned our lives upside down.”

Couple Forced to Take in Criminal Lodger

As one person remarks in the comments portion of the story, maybe this is a new, experimental solution for prison overcrowding. Each home it’s own convict.

Really, there ought to be something the government can do about this situation. I can’t believe that a criminal would simply be allowed to move in with a couple ordinary citizens, against their will and at the command of the state. Stories like these really turn on the Libertarian streak in me. If our homes aren’t inviolate from the whims of the state, then where can we find refuge?

What really irks is this thug’s response to the wife’s protest upon his arrival on her doorstep: “I’m staying here until the tag’s off. There’s fuck all you can do about it. The courts have told me to.”