NEED AN ALIBI? TRY ASPERGERS' SYNDROME

Graffiti artists, taggers and computer hackers can hardly be accused of lacking imagination or the ability to communicate with others yet the parents of Gary McKinnen who hacked into ninety seven US Government computers including the Pentagon and NASA, and Jonathan Chalmers who spray painted crappy spacemen over everything that didn’t move at the University of Reading have cried ‘Asperger’s Syndrome’ in the defence of their sons’ actions.

What do you do with a person who allegedly has an illness that makes them break the law? Let them commit away, sympathise and pat them on the head, ignore the ‘illness’ and throw the book at them or fine them fifty pence a week for ten weeks hoping they’ll learn their lesson?

People with Asperger’s Syndrome usually have above average intelligence. In both of the aforementioned cases they clearly have a skill although in the case of Jonathan Chalmers not much of one. So make them use their skill to make amends for their wrong doing – McKinnen can design firewalls and Chambers can paint over the dated insular mural next to the Oracle?

Whatever the punishment, as far as McKinnen is concerned, we must not let him be tried in the States – you try getting America to export a citizen for trial abroad – they’d laugh at the idea; in Britain regrettably we do not have the same respect for people born in Britain, just seemingly those who aren’t.