HALF a dozen homes have been declared no-go zones by South Western Ambulance.

Crews have been assaulted in each of these middens in the past, with a total of 12 attacks over five years.

I’ve been trying to think what might possess a person to attack a paramedic – or, for that matter, what would possess a person to attack medical personnel in an Accident and Emergency unit.

Personally, I reckon the problem is that our courts don’t show the guilty parties enough sympathy and understanding.

Our courts already routinely let them go free, and lawyers deliver impassioned speeches on their behalf every day, but more love is clearly what they need.

Unfortunately, our don’t seem to be giving them enough love, or else why would some people still clobber paramedics?

It’s time for a rethink. What we need is for senior members of the legal community to be sent out with our ambulance crews to meet some of these poor, misunderstood and vulnerable members of society. Then they’d be able to empathise on the spot instead of in a courtroom weeks or months later.

As a starting point, I suggest changing the law to mandate the presence of at least one judge in every ambulance on Friday and Saturday nights.

Whenever an ambulance was called to an address known for trouble, the legal person would be sent in ahead of everybody else. This would give them some great insights ahead of any subsequent court case.

After all, it’s all very well for a judge to hear about an accused person’s ‘anger issues’ at second hand, but nothing beats the experience of being put in a headlock and punched repeatedly in the face by somebody with the impulse control of a spoiled toddler and the IQ of a mushroom.

Something else judges are often told is that a person who attacked a paramedic had delusions brought on by the use of hallucinogenic substances. Again, this is all very well, but it’s no substitute for being chased in circles around the smashed remains of a living room table by a man with a knife and fork who’s mistaken you for a fish supper.

Likewise, a judge is often told something along the lines of: “My client is deeply sorry for his conduct toward the ambulance crew.” Imagine the extra empathy that judge would be able to summon for a defendant if it was the judge who’d personally had an enormous dog set on them, been stabbed with a filthy needle or pelted with bodily waste.

The same policy could be extended to other situations in which medical personnel are subjected to abuse and violence, such as casualty units.

Somebody’s drunk themselves to a standstill and now wants to kick an innocent person’s head in? Send in the judge.

Somebody’s decided to experiment with a new and interesting form of substance abuse, such as setting fire to the sofa and inhaling the fumes, and now they think anybody who approaches them is a servant of Satan who must be bitten to death? Send in the judge.

Somebody’s got an injury but they’re such a wretched, coddled inadequate that they think this entitles them to scream every obscenity and threat imaginable at the very people who are trying to help them? Send in the judge.

I’m sure my idea would lead to offenders being so overwhelmed with the love from our courts that they’d never want to do anything wrong again.

Either that or anybody who so much as said “bum” in front of a paramedic would be sent down for a decade or two...