UK: 'Domineering' men face domestic violence prosecutions

The Criminalization of Almost Everything

"Cato Policy Report, January/February 2010
The Criminalization of Almost Everything

When laws grow so voluminous and vague that they oppress those who live under them, society can become as unlivable as if it were lawless. Subject to the arbitrary scrutiny of prosecutors overcome by ambition for their own 15 minutes of fame, ordinary citizens face the horrors of becoming criminal defendants. At a Cato Book Forum in October, Harvey Silverglate, author of Three Felonies a Day, and Tim Lynch, editor of In the Name of Justice and director of Cato's Project on Criminal Justice, discussed the growing threat of federal criminal law.

HARVEY SILVERGLATE: An average, busy professional gets up in the morning, gets the kids to school, goes to work, uses the telephone or e-mail, has meetings, works on a prospectus or bank loan, goes home, puts the kids to bed, has dinner, reads the newspaper, goes to sleep, and has no idea that, in the course of that day, he or she has very likely committed three felonies. Three felonies that some ambitious, creative prosecutor can pick out from that day's activities and put into an indictment.

In his foreword to my book, Alan Dershowitz discusses his time litigating cases in the old Soviet Union. He was always taken by the fact that they could prosecute anybody they wanted because some of the statutes were so vague. Dershowitz points out that this was a technique developed by Beria, the infamous sidekick of Stalin, who said, "Show me the man and I'll find you the crime." That really is something that has survived the Soviet Union and has arrived in the good old USA. "Show me the man," says any federal prosecutor, "and I can show you the crime." This is not an exaggeration."

But what now in this new situation in the UK does this look like? Does borrowing 10 euro from your bf/gf and not paying it back constitute taking control of their finances? Or what if they ask you to buy something for them (with their ATM card) and they say it ought to be no more than 15 euro but the total came to 20 euro, does that constitute such a thing? And verbal insults-- really, anything you say that your mate finds even a little offensive could be considered an insult. How often does it need to occur before it meets the definition of DV promulgated here? Just once? Or two or three times? Getting into any kind of romantic relationship of any kind is now basically risking your personal freedom, especially if you're male.

On the one hand, social scientists decry the "hookup culture" of the modern day and the lack of LTRs. On the other hand, they seek to institute one new law after another that promotes new ways to make people less likely to even want to be in a relationship. You can't rob Peter to pay Paul when you can't even keep track of how much you robbed from Peter in the first place!

This could be solved by mass charges brought by men upon their wives/girlfriends.. since this type of abuse has been inflicted upon me many many times by women

Ridiculous laws like this show we haven't come very far from the middle ages. This is little more than witch-hunting males as shown in Witch-Hunting Males at Youtube.