Arsonists, wildfires . . . and a cure?

I note that arsonists are suspected of being responsible for many of the wildfires currently plaguing Britain. The Daily Mail reports:

As towering flames rip through tinder-dry bracken, a suspected arsonist is handcuffed and led away in this extraordinary picture.




This blaze, which ravaged more than two acres of clifftop at a seaside beauty spot, is one of thousands of wildfires which have spread across Britain in the last few days.

. . .

Many of the fires are believed to have been started by arsonists and witnesses even described seeing a gang of youths running from a fire they had started in Berkshire.

A fire service spokesman said: 'The sheer stupidity of it beggars belief and puts lives at risk.'

. . .

In Northern Ireland, police were investigating reports of a man seen with a petrol can close to one of the worst gorse fires for years in the Mourne Mountains.

Another two youths were spotted lighting fires in south Armagh, reports to the Police Service of Northern Ireland added.

There's more at the link.

I've never understood what motivates arsonists in situations like this. It's not like the owner of a building, who burns it down to benefit from the insurance payout; or someone resentful of huge 'timber farms', as was frequently the case in Louisiana, where I lived until recently. People who couldn't compete with the economies of scale of the big timber companies, or who were forbidden to hunt on timber company land, sometimes set fires in an attempt at retribution.

Not so these arsonist scum in Britain. They seem to set fire to woodland purely to see the destruction, enjoy the frantic efforts to control the blaze, and (perhaps) to wallow vicariously in the sufferings of those who lose property - and perhaps even lives - to the flames. I just can't understand how the mind of someone like that works (or doesn't).

In my country of birth, South Africa, arson-caused wildfires weren't nearly as common in forest-farming areas. You see, the workers in those 'plantation forests' were drawn from local tribes; so arson would cost them their jobs, as well as the land they farmed for their subsistence, and on which their families built their huts. Therefore, they didn't suffer arsonists lightly. As a matter of fact, they (allegedly) didn't suffer them at all! There were persistent rumors (which the police never seemed to have the time to investigate thoroughly) to the effect that if locals caught an arsonist in the act, they didn't bother handing him over to the law. Instead, they simply tied him hand and foot, then tossed him into the fire he'd just set. This tended to stop further arson attacks for quite some time, as the word spread . . .

There are those in Britain who'll doubtless object to such an 'African solution' on moral grounds. All well and good - but I guarantee it'd be cheaper than housing and feeding these miscreants at taxpayer expense, while they serve whatever sentence the notoriously lax British justice system metes out to them! The deterrent effect on future wannabe arsonists is also not to be sneezed at . . .

Peter