The loyalist attack on new shared housing in Antrim should be considered a serious property crime, in addition to everything else about it that is obviously an outrage.
The two properties targeted in nearby developments are part of a £3.5 million Stormont-funded scheme under the executive’s Housing For All programme. A similar £6.2 million development is under construction less than a mile away.
The public purpose of this investment is being deliberately subverted and the value of the assets significantly reduced. Properties attacked in this manner suffer a sharp drop in value, as can those around them. More generally, property in segregated neighbourhoods is worth less than in mixed neighbourhoods.
The loss is straightforward to quantify and houses do not have to be put on the market for it to show up on balance sheets, nor are the legal consequences some theoretical or civil matter. Criminal damage covers any act or threat that reduces a property’s value, even temporarily. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that a seven-figure offence has occurred at Antrim.
Yet the PSNI is classing it as minor criminal damage, describing its extent as two broken windows and paint damage.
To indicate this is being taken seriously, officers are investigating it as a sectarian hate crime. However, that is not a separate offence. It is an aggravating factor in the criminal damage offence, to be taken into account when sentencing. Other aggravating factors include involvement of a group or gang and damage to a public amenity.
But an aggravated minor offence is still minor, attracting only a stiffer penalty within the normal range. Under Northern Ireland’s sentencing guidelines, the maximum punishment for minor criminal damage is a community order plus a compensation order.
To be fair to the PSNI, it is constrained by the same view among prosecutors and the courts. Criminal damage is rarely taken seriously, even when it is serious. Legislation sets the maximum penalty at 14 years in prison, or life where arson is involved. The sentencing guidelines for Northern Ireland, written by the judiciary for itself, put the absolute maximum at 12 months custody (only half of which would be served).
Although legislation in England and Wales is almost identical, guidelines there for the most serious offences start at 18 months and go up to four years. There is also a clear threshold for how much damage constitutes serious – £5,000 or more.
Taking criminal damage more seriously in Northern Ireland should have a deterrent effect. A decade ago, attitudes changed towards rioters across our criminal justice system and custodial sentences were imposed, inspired in part by the success of the same approach in England. Loyalists found their supply of youthful stone-throwers dried up and a problem considered intractable for generations noticeably improved.
If people have credible cause to fear they will be caught and punished, then protecting threatened property need not be a pointless game of local whack-a-mole, as the PSNI tends to see it.
If people have credible cause to fear they will be caught and punished, then protecting threatened property need not be a pointless game of local whack-a-mole
Taking proper account of the cost of criminal damage is the essential first step to changing attitudes. Catching people who attack homes in the middle of the night is difficult and expensive, as is prosecuting and imprisoning them. Little wonder the authorities consider this futile and excessive when they are comparing it to the value of a couple of broken windows. They have given Northern Ireland its own perverse version of ‘broken windows’ policing, where a major crime is treated as a minor crime while the neighbourhood falls apart.
There is a broader problem with the PSNI’s mission of ‘keeping people safe’, a priority endorsed by the Policing Board. Criminal damage to property is genuinely dangerous, hence the life sentence for arson. But making an absolute priority of safety leads to extraordinary outcomes, such as at Cantrell Close in 2017, a shared housing development in south Belfast, where police turned up at 10pm and told four Catholic families to leave immediately due to a loyalist threat.
That same year, a Supreme Court ruling on the flag protests found the PSNI was wrong to prioritise safety over upholding the law, even where the right to life was at stake. Policing’s primary duty is “to prevent the commissioning of offences” – that is how it serves the goal of public safety.
We need innovative police, prosecutors and courts who will treat criminal damage as seriously as the law allows, the public wants and precedent shows would get results.
There is little hope for shared housing without it.