See it for what it is.

The so-called "honour killing" of a young Kurdish lady has made the headlines mainly because she had told the Police several times that she believed her life to be in danger, but it appears little if any action was taken. Not surprisingly, this has resulted in calls for "more to be done" to stop this sort of thing happening. But what, precisely? We don't live in a "Minority Report" type world, where you can be arrested for a crime which you have not yet committed - much less, for a crime which you only might commit. We already have procedures for dealing with domestic violence - and that's essentially what this is, although the violence usually comes from parents or siblings rather than from the spouse. It seems errors of judgment were probably made in this case, but I don't think we should get hung up over the cultural aspect - if people have a mind-set that thinks in terms of dishonour and such, there's little the law can do about it. On the other hand, there's plenty of legislation already in place to provide a degree of protection for potential victims of domestic violence. At the end of the day, however, the Police have to deal with many incidents where people report threats of varying severity, and they have the difficult job of assessing just what the actual level of risk is, and I think we have to accept that they won't always get it right.