If that is her son's home address then she can lose her tenancy, presumably she is stating it is not his home address.
Right - with you now! The lad is 19 years old and living away from the parental home, so under the mother's tenancy agreement, where anti-social behaviour by anyone living at her address can affect her tenancy, the argument is that this sanction couldn't apply in this case, unless he was bailed to that address.
To be honest, that reasoning still seems arbitrary to me, as surely the relevant issue is where the son was living at the time of the alleged offence, not presently?
Back to the substantive issue, I watched David Cameron's interview on Northwest Tonight, and when Gordon Burns posed the question as to where would people go if they were evicted from their homes (& by implication, what would they do if they lost benefit), the Prime Minister replied something along the lines of "
Well they should have thought of that before they went out rioting".
On one level, I agree with David Cameron, as I suspect many people who are angry, outraged or scared by what has happened do too, as there has to be (and be seen to be) proportionate consequences for actions in any just society.
The problem is, when considering the issue of consequences, what would be the impact on society as a whole of evicting people from their homes and denying them even a basic income? The government really has to make a clear decision as to what relationship with mainstream society such individuals should have, and this is where things get tricky. For example, would the government advocate the notion of a purpose-built ghetto {effectively a poor house}, where those without accomodation or income for reasons of criminality can be corralled and contained in the most basic of circumstances, with no relationship with the rest of society? In our knee-jerk anger right now, this may appear like just deserts, but in the longer term, is this really a desirable outcome for society, or even politically acceptable?
I certainly wouldn't profess to have the answers, but my fear is that despite all the tough talk, neither have the politicians, and the consequences of such a policy have not been sufficiently thought through.