AppId is over the quota
At the height of August's rioting, Jordan Blackshaw and Perry Sutcliffe created Facebook pages urging acquaintances to gather for – in Blackshaw's words – a "smash down". Extremely irresponsible as these postings were, neither of the proposed events took place, neither man participated in rioting and no actual harm occurred as a consequence. Both men were nonetheless sentenced to four years' imprisonment for inciting the commission of an offence. The court of appeal upheld those sentences yesterday in a ruling that sets a dismaying – and bewildering – precedent.
The appeal court judges were "unimpressed" by the argument that neither man had gone door-to-door to incite rioting, declaring that "modern technology has done away with the need for such direct personal communication". Lengthy sentences were appropriate because "decent citizens" had been "put in fear" by the threat to riot. The sentences, in short, had a deterrent effect and were justified in the context of "mob criminality". For similar reasons the court also upheld long jail terms for burglary and violence against the police, though it halved the sentences of three people convicted of handling stolen goods on the grounds that they did not contribute to the disorder. That is welcome. So too was the fact that none of yesterday's cases concerned minors, who can expect more sympathetic treatment at the hands of the youth courts.
No one should underestimate the harm and terror inflicted during those five days in August. The riots were unprecedented in recent history. Police involvement in Mark Duggan's death sparked the first disturbances in Tottenham, but the subsequent riots and looting were, as the lord chief justice said, "utterly inexcusable". Indeed, citing the Garden House riots 41 years ago, he made it clear that political motivation was in any case irrelevant to sentencing.
Any offence committed in the context of a breakdown of order will attract more serious punishment. The prime minister's call for judges to bear down hard on rioters met with general approval. But within days senior figures, including the former director of public prosecutions Ken Macdonald, were warning of a loss of proportion. The decision to cut the sentences for handling stolen goods justifies those concerns. Yet faced with the phenomenon of Facebook, the court missed the chance to cool the heat of those August days. The judiciary is inclined to take a dim view of anything that smacks of conspiracy and is instinctively twitchy about any new technology which they fear might wriggle beyond the rule of law. When Twitter users named a footballer who was the subject of a privacy injunction earlier this year, Lord Judge warned that "modern technology" was "totally out of control".
But those who remember the seven-year sentence Abu Hamza received in 2006 – for six counts of soliciting to murder and two of using threatening words or behaviour likely to stir up racial hatred – will find yesterday's ruling extraordinary, and all the more so for its failure to properly explain how judges arrived at the figure of four years. Had they not pleaded guilty, Lord Judge indicated, they would have received an even longer jail term. Last year Darren Tinklin was jailed for three years for illegal possession of a firearm and making explosives. The criminal justice system is right to make examples of Blackshaw and Sutcliffe. But they are not bomb-makers. This ruling ramps up pressure on Britain's overcrowded jails. It made no mention of restorative justice, nor suggested that rioters might benefit from being forced to confront the results of their actions directly. The justice secretary has pointed out that some of the rioters had been jailed before and lamented reoffending rates among former inmates. It is a bitter irony that his words now lie buried under the questionable belief that a prison term will either deter or reform.
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