Fleurs du mal

In South Africa, suffering from one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world, people don't just want to catch evildoers. They want to make them suffer, and have come up with inventive ways of doing so . The photograph depicts a rare instance of the now vanishing Eina Ivy (translated: Ouch! Ivy). This decorative product of the booming home security industry looks like ivy, but in fact it is metallic, and conceals sharp spikes to penetrate the hand of the unwary wall scaler.

I think it has probably been banned, like the anti-hijack car flamethrower invented by a Mr Charl Fourie, which was designed to shoot gouts of fire up alongside the doors and crisp the gun-toting robbers as they loomed up at the windows.

I am not sure of the current status of Rapex, the vagina dentata device worn internally and designed (by a woman) to bite down on a rapist's knob. Forced to seek treatment, he would be instantly identifiable as a sex attacker.

The Independent Online reports: "The ... device is inserted into the vagina by a woman who feels she is at risk of rape, and if she is attacked, small burr-like teeth will attach themselves to the tip of the rapist's erect penis, inventor Sonette Ehlers explains. As he withdraws and becomes flaccid, it is only possible to remove the device by surgery, Ehlers said ahead of a launch and demonstration at Kleinmond near Cape Town."

A demonstration?

In fact, the high rate of carjacking is at least partly due to the efficacy of antitheft devices on today's vehicles: immobilisers, alarms and steering wheel locks. It's easier to just get it while it's hot: buy yourself an AK-47 for about twenty quid, station yourself near a traffic light in an isolated spot, and wait.

And the high walls favoured by suburbanites actually facilitate crime, since perpetrators are invisible to passersby once over them.

I have no burglar alarm, and my walls aren't high. I do have burglar bars on the windows and a Trellidor -- a concertina-type steel gate -- and an intercom for callers. My car has an immobiliser (electronic engine disabler). These measures are considered antediluvian. What, no motion sensors, spotlights, electronic alarms or "rape gates"? (The chilling name is given to interior concertina doors that seal off the bedroom areas from the rest of the house. As it happens, I don't need a rape gate ... I hope)

I have had two car breakins and have been mugged at knifepoint, and there is nothing I could have done about any of it. I am relying on statistical probabilities to support my feeling that I have had my share of victimhood.