gofer articles

Home incarceration is normally no laughing matter. It is a legal measure whereby an individual is confined to his or her residence, with severe restrictions in place on travel and sometimes even on contact by phone or other means.

Yet home incarceration is considered quite humane, and is normally adopted where outright imprisonment seems inappropriately excessive relative to the crime even while a simple fine would be stupdendously lenient. Such confinement is also employed in cases in which the convicted person’s health is at issue, often regardless of the gravity of the crime committed.

Given all that, what might a movie named “House Arrest” possibly involve?

It’s a comedy, infact, but with a serious concept at its heart. This 1996 effort concerns a group of high school students who lock their parents in the basement to force the adults to resolve their issues! Sounds a bit silly, but the tactic does usually work – about as much as when it does not.

Grover and Stacy are siblings who decide that their parents are behaving rather childishly in deciding to divorce after eighteen years of marriage, so they refuse to let them out of the basement until they have sorted out their problems. The siblings unwittingly begin a local trend, inspiring their friends to do the same thing with their mother and father! It all reminds one of the Camp David peace accords that took place during the Presidency of Bill Clinton.

In that situation, the Palestinian and Israeli sides were literally locked into a negotiating room by the President’s advisors out of aggravation that nothing of substance had been discussed. Though each sides agreed fairly enthusiastically to the peace talks at first, once underway a deep reluctance pervaded the proceedings.

It is tempting to imagine that one can lock away implacable foes into a room as one could oneself when cramming for a school exam, but such a technique best works when both sides really harbor some affection and compassion for the other – in which situation there would likely be little reason to lock up anybody in the first place!