CRIME AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Observers, both in the U.K. and abroad, were appalled at the rioting and looting that took place across the country at the beginning of August. It seemed at one point as if the British authorities had lost control. Getting on for 2,000 people have been through the judicial system, with some courts sitting through the night in order to clear the backlog. Judges and magistrates clamped down with harsh sentences, including (unusually) custodial sentences for first-time offenders.

Too harsh, said criminal lawyers. They focussed in particular on sentences of 4 years each for two young men, who had encouraged further rioting and looting on their Facebook pages. These two, plus five cases of burglary and three of handling stolen goods, were the subject of appeals against sentence (though not conviction) that the Court of Appeal reviewed this week. They could be considered as test cases for many of the other convictions.

The Court of Appeal, led by the Lord Chief Justice, was not impressed. The two Facebook cases and the five burglary cases all had their sentences confirmed; the stolen goods cases had their sentences halved (though that still represents jail time of between 6 and 8 months for first-time offenders caught in possession of - eg - a stolen television, even though they hadn't stolen it themselves). The gist of their Lordships' argument is that doing things for a lark cannot be dissociated from the context in which the actions take place; so writing something on Facebook in Cornwall which incites rioting in Newcastle is exactly the same as if the writer were standing in Newcastle and egging on his fellow citizens. Sentence should, therefore, be both a punishment and a deterrent to others.

With the prison system currently bursting at the seams, and a mass of research showing conclusively that prison is a very bad place to be for young men convicted of a first offence, this outcome will dismay the many people (including myself) who believe that the U.K. has a serious problem with its criminal justice system. In saying this, I am not in any way condoning what happened on the ground; I simply believe that the judicial reaction has been too strong. Spending four years in jail is a very long time indeed for a 20-year old.

The decision also highlights - once again - the risks of saying things on social media that you wouldn't necessarily say face to face. People have been warned.

Walter Blotscher