THERE is always a danger when taking the law into your own hands of letting things go too far.

However, the vast majority of people will surely feel sympathy for the way Mark Fenwick reacted when his home was damaged after a slab of concrete was thrown through a window.

The father-of-three frog-marched three teenagers to a police van after his home was damaged on "mischief night" last year. At the time, one of the police officers thanked him for his help, but about a month later he was arrested and charged with assault.

The decision to prosecute was partly taken because Mr Fenwick had armed himself with a stick, but can you blame him in a society where knife crime has doubled in the past two years?

There are 175 knife related crimes committed in this country every day - that's equivalent to one every eight minutes.

Now Mr Fenwick has been vindicated, we have to ask if a more common sense approach should have been taken regarding whether or not he should have been taken to court. Surely a stern warning would have been enough?

Was it really in the public interest to put a good man through the ordeal of a court case?

Only last week, Justice Secretary Jack Straw said he had chased and caught a burglar trying to break into a club in 1980. In another incident, he chased and caught a robber - holding him until police arrived.

Mr Straw said: "You have not got time in that situation to think: 'well, where does the balance lie, what is reasonable force?' I happen to believe that good citizens ... should, if they feel able, intervene."

Hopefully, the Crown Prosecution Service will bear those sentiments in mind the next time it decides to prosecute a man who only did what he thought was his civic duty.