Sippenhaftung

 

In old Germanic law (pre-Roman) there was a concept known as "Sippenhaftung", 'kin responsibility'.  Certain crimes were serious enough that the criminal's family or clan was considered to be as responsible for the crime as was the actual criminal.  It even survives today in (especially) classrooms where, as one example, one student's misbehavior can cause the class outing to be cancelled.  In operation, it effectively outsources law enforcement by giving people an incentive to enforce proper behavior among their family.

We generally shy away from such collective punishment because it offends our modern sense of justice, but there may be situations where Sippenhaftung is actually the only way to prevent certain crimes.  I refer, of course, to 'terrorism'.  Terrorists often commit their acts of terror fully expecting that they themselves will not survive to be arrested, tried, convicted, and punished.  Especially if their families applaud their deaths as some act of religious faith or political protest, the terrorists know that they will be honored in their deaths.  Our reaction to such things is to shake our heads in disbelief.  What if our reaction were something else?

What if our reaction to a terrorist incident is to immediately deport the parents, siblings, spouse and offspring of an identfied terrorist, whether those deportees were citizens or not?  What if our reaction is to order them gone in 10 days or 'wanted dead or alive'?

I have the feeling families would be much more likely to report a relative as soon as they are suspected of plotting terror rather than face the possibility of having to uproot the entire family and flee for their lives.  Terrorists themselves might become less enthralled with the whole notion because a family they (presumably) love would be put in danger — would, in fact, become the lawful targets of terrorism-in-return.

Further, it may be that some deportees may not be able to find a country that will take them in at all.  A mere one or two such families could spell the end of terrorist acts in our lifetime as potential terrorists contemplate making their families homeless, stateless refugees.