IN recent weeks, the police service has been in the news. One very senior officer suggested that bobbies on the beat should be discontinued because there were no crimes to deal with – in other words, she was suggesting those uniformed patrols were unnecessary.

This completely misses the point – it is due to uniformed beat officers being highly visible that crimes and anti-social behaviour are kept to a minimum. Those officers are a great asset to the community. An elderly lady told me she regarded uniformed police officers as her insurance policy – they kept her safe and she was grateful. The fact that few crimes or offences are committed is due to their presence. Remove the patrols and we shall experience increased anti-social behaviour and rising crime.

Another chief constable raised a fuss by suggesting her officers should not attend scenes of minor crimes such as burglaries. One splendid and well-known method of reducing the crime figures is not to record any crimes.

For example, long ago, my raincoat was stolen from a village hall cloakroom and I reported the theft. Later, I discovered that the police officer to whom I reported the crime had recorded it as “lost property” not theft.

I recovered my coat two years later when, as a young constable, I caught a man wearing it. That’s when I discovered it was recorded as lost property, not a crime. A neat way of reducing crime figures.

Since I joined the police in 1952, burglary has been continuously downgraded and appears in danger of being obliterated. If that happens, the authorities could claim that no burglaries were being committed due to good police work, consequently even fewer patrolling bobbies would be needed.

In fact, fewer would lead to an increase in crime and anti-social behaviour. Burglary has long been regarded as breach of Common Law and a very serious crime. My New Law Dictionary of 1744 says the name burglary derives from the Saxon burgh meaning house, and Laron meaning thief. Burglary was “where a man breaketh and entereth the house of another in the night to the intention of committing some felony whether or not that intention was executed (sic)”.

The essence was breaking into a house at night (9pm to 6am) with the intention of committing a felony such as stealing, murder, rape, arson, damage or other serious crime. Breaking into a house during the daytime with such intent was called house-breaking, and breaking into a church was sacrilege.

Those three crimes were known “the breaking offences” and when committed at night, burglary and sacrilege carried the death penalty. Robbery, by the way, refers to attacks on people, not houses or buildings.

When Henry I came to the throne in 1100, he introduced new capital offences which included murder, treason, burglary, arson, robbery and theft. Henry II decided our legal system required change so he enacted that crimes of robbery, murder and false coining should be punished by amputation of the guilty person’s right hand and right foot.

Later in 1536 Henry VIII extended the death penalty to include piracy, rape, murder, sacrilege, highway robbery, abduction and some burglaries and housebreakings. Hanging remained the penalty for many crimes and by 1700 it could be imposed for high or petty treason, piracy, murder, arson, burglary, housebreaking, robbery, horse-stealing and stealing from a person to the value of one shilling (5p).

Our Common Law dealt with such crimes but was codified by the Larceny Act of 1916 which was in force when I became a police officer.

While night-time breaking into houses and places of divine worship have continued to be regarded as serious and were classified as felonies, day-time breaking into houses, however, was not so serious and was categorised as a misdemeanour. There were many other breaking offences relating to buildings such as workshops, docks and mines.

A substantial change to the law on burglary and kindred offences came with the Theft Act of 1968.

The crime of house-breaking disappeared from the statute book and in its place was an extended definition of burglary.

This meant that burglary could be committed at any time of day (not only in the night as hitherto) but also in any building, not merely dwelling houses.

A new crime of aggravated burglary was created, ie: being armed with a weapon while committing burglary, but in some cases burglary could be tried in lower courts.

In this way, its seriousness was reduced.

The Theft Act of 1968 also changed the definition of theft and robbery and up-dated what had previously been a rather out-of-date statute.

Now, it seems, the criminal status of burglary has been further eroded but this could lead to another unwelcome development. Victims of crime might take the law into their own hands while defending their homes and goods. And that is against the law.