How to deal with a burglar

The other night my neighbor disturbed a cat-burglar walking across the roof of his house. When my neighbor shouted to frighten the man and raise the alarm, the burglar fled. It took more than an hour of diligent searching of the neighborhood before the burglar was found hiding under a section of roof to the rear of my house.

I first saw this thief-of-the-night an hour later as he was brought back from temporary detention to face the community and re-enact the crime. The face of this tall, athletic, lithe young man was already puffed, swollen, bruised and bleeding. For one and a half hours I watched as, almost naked, he was forced to retrace his footsteps over the roof tops of more than a dozen houses, to show how he had reached the house of my neighbor. Whenever his feet touched terra firma he was marched along or forced to crawl on his belly with a crowd of more than 40 onlookers following behind.

The security officers again and again demanded to know where he had left his clothes and who his accomplices were. The burglar insisted he had been alone. Blows rained down on him and, as he crawled ignominiously along the road, ferocious kicks were delivered to his ribs. When stationary, lighted cigarette buts were pushed on to his naked skin and his bare feet were viciously stamped on many times.

Throughout his ordeal he never once violently lashed out or broke down succumbing to, what for most, would be a horrendous fear of when the next injury would be inflicted at random. One had the sense he had been through all this before and, thus, knew his best policy was to compliantly and, with a measured plaintiveness, submit.

The way he rapidly contorted his body to avoid the contact of the lighted cigarettes and the ghastly hollowness of the sound of each kick to his body, reminded me of how, as a boy, I had seen pigs forced into market pens. The pigs had squealed with each prod of a spike; but this man somehow retained his dignity throughout.

As I walked away from this numbing scene a vehicle was brought up ostensibly to run over the legs of this man prostrated on the ground. It was at this stage that I did see him point to the roof of a house and then hear local residents triumphantly declare the burglar had decided to talk.

If the punishment is supposed to fit the crime here we have abject failure. This man carried no weapon and showed no violence. Tenuously he stood accused of stealing watches, bags and an audio-cassette player on previous nights. In any case, as with many who are actually at the sharp-end, his share of the loot could well have been negligible.

Despite the enormous ill-gotten gains of white-collar crime the public reaction is far more restrained -- perhaps because the loot does not comprise personal items, the sanctity of homes is not directly threatened and, importantly, the criminal's position and education make him far less defenseless.

However, in general, does such cruelty deter? I think not. It only serves to alienate, marginalize further and create resentment. The man is likely to see his only crime as getting caught and perhaps next time he'll take the precaution of carrying a knife or a sickle.

FRANK RICHARDSON

Jakarta