Ouch! UK court giving out harsh sentence, 180 degree shift after the day of the riot
Two Facebook users who urged people to join in riots online are jailed for FOUR years
Two Facebook users who tried to kickstart mob violence during last week’s riots were each jailed for four years yesterday.
Perry Sutcliffe, 22, and Jordan Blackshaw, 20, were locked up even though their ‘chilling’ plans to go on the rampage came to nothing.
Penal reform charities have expressed concern over the long sentences being handed out for those involved even on the peripheries of the riots, sparking a debate as to whether some courts were handing out excessive punishments.
Guilty of trying to incite riots: Jordan Blackshaw, 20, left, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, right, were both jailed for four years for creating riot Facebook pages
Guilty of trying to incite riots: Jordan Blackshaw, 20, left, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, right, were both jailed for four years for creating riot Facebook pages
In a separate development, a judge in Manchester tore up normal sentencing rules and said any adults involved in rioting should expect to go lose their liberty for a ‘significant period’.
Judge Andrew Gilbart, QC, unveiled a sliding scale of tariffs under which riot leaders will be jailed for at least eight years, burglars who broke into shops to steal for between four and seven years, and arsonists between three and seven years.
Even those who claimed they found stolen goods abandoned on the street should be jailed for up to four years, he said.
The sentences were longer than for similar offences committed ‘in isolation’ because of the need to send a message about the consequences of such ‘outbursts of criminal behaviour’.
Jailing three men for their part in last week’s mayhem, Judge Gilbart made a furious attack on rioters for undoing Manchester’s efforts to rebuild after the IRA bomb that tore through the city centre in 1996.
As Judge Gilbart made his comments, a few miles away at Chester Crown Court Judge Elgan Edwards was making an example of Facebook plotters Sutcliffe and Blackshaw.
The court was told that in separate incidents they set up pages on social networking sites at the height of last week’s violence calling on others to join them in causing trouble in Cheshire.
Unemployed landscape gardener Sutcliffe, who has just one previous conviction, created a Facebook page entitled ‘The Warrington Riots’ and urged 400 friends to join him in creating mayhem.
Violence: Police officers stand near a barricade of burning and vandalised cars on a street in Hackney, east London, on August 8
Violence: Police officers stand near a barricade of burning and vandalised cars on a street in Hackney, east London, on August 8
Petty criminal Blackshaw created an event called ‘Smash Down in Northwich Town’ and invited 147 people to gather at a McDonald’s in the centre of the historic town for a looting spree. Both pages were quickly spotted by the police and taken down before any violence occurred.
But the sentences – which are tougher than many handed out to muggers, sex attackers and killer drivers – are fresh evidence that judges are determined to reflect public demands for the strictest possible punishments.
There has been widespread anger over perceived lenient sentencing in recent years. Earlier this month Jason Owen who was jailed over the death of Baby P was released after serving three years of his six-year sentence. His release came just two days after the fourth anniversary of 17-month-old Peter Connelly's death who suffered more than 50 injuries.
TOUGH JUSTICE
Michael Gillespie-Doyle, 18, caught by police before he could steal cigarettes from ransacked Sainsburys jailed for two years in Manchester
Coach driver David Beswick, 31, of Eccles help out a man struggling to carry a 37ins TV looted from pawnbrokers Cash Generator in Salford. Beswick, who admitted handling stolen goods, was jailed for 18 months
Homeless Stephen Carter, 26, thought his 'luck was in' when he found £500 of clothes and shoes, which had been looted from Liam Gallagher's Manchester branch of Pretty Green jailed for 16 months
College student jailed for six months at Camberwell Magistrates Court for stealing a £3.50 case bottle of water from Lidl in Brixton during the riots
In Manchester yesterday, 18-year-old Michael Gillespie-Doyle was given two years at Manchester Crown Court after attempting to take a packet of cigarettes from a ransacked Sainsburys.
The teenager admitted he had been 'swept up' in the riots and was 'ashamed'.
Earlier this month former MP Jim Devine, who swindled taxpayers out of £8,385, walked free after serving four months of a 16-month sentence.
Another ex-MP Eric Illsley, who was jailed for 12 months in February for fiddling £14,500 in expenses, was released in May after three months behind bars while David Chaytor served just four out of an 18-month sentence for helping himself to £22,000.
Judges have already made it clear that they are prepared to come down hard on public disorder.
Charlie Gilmour , the 21-year-old son of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, was sentenced to 16 months for violent disorder after swinging on the Cenotaph during last year's student riots in London.
Ed Woollard was imprisoned for two years and eight months for throwing a fire extinguisher from roof of Conservative Party's Millbank headquarters during last year's student riots.
Speaking about the Facebook plotters Sutcliffe and Blackshaw, Patrick Mercer, Tory MP, said: 'These individuals were trying to suborn others to organise protests at the centre of a conspiracy to riot.'
He described the sentences of the Facebook plotters, along with Charlie Gilmour, as 'exemplary'.
However he refused to comment on why former MP Jim Devine was given a lesser sentence than 18-year-old Gillespie-Doyle.
Geoff Dobson, deputy director of the Prison Reform Trust, said courts should 'pay attention' to sentencing guidelines.
Mr Dobson said: 'The use of imprisonment will be important in marking the severity of offenders that have caused serious harm and damage.
'Sentencing guidelines pay attention to culpability and the degree of harm caused, and provide a framework which the courts must take account of in all cases.
'Courts should have available a full range of sentencing options to ensure people take personal responsibility for making amends.
Strong arm of the law: Rioters are being given severe sentences
Strong arm of the law: Rioters are being given severe sentences
'Restorative justice gives priority to the needs of victims while facing offenders with the harm they have caused and allowing them to take the practical steps to repair the damage.'
The tough prison sentences handed down for attempting to organise riots were welcomed by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles.
'We need to understand that people for a while thought that this was a crime without consequence,' he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
'We cannot have people being frightened in their beds, frightened in their own homes, for their public safety.
'That's why these kind of exemplary sentences are necessary and I think the public would be rightly alarmed if that incitement to riot got off with just a slap on the wrist.'
Tom Brake, the Lib Dem MP who chairs the party's backbench committee on home affairs, told The Times: 'Sentencing must be proportionate and consistent.
'Those guilty of serious offences during the rioting should serve long terms, but those guilty of petty offences, particularly first-time offenders or where guilt was admitted at an early stage should be treated similarly to those who committed the same type of offence a day before the riots.'
Judge Edwards, the Recorder of Chester, branded both Blackshaw and Sutcliffe as ‘evil’.
He sentenced Blackshaw, who admitted a charge of arranging an event capable of encouraging the commission of offences including burglary, criminal damage and riot, to four years in a young offenders institution.
The judge told him: ‘This happened at a time when collective insanity gripped the nation. Your conduct was quite disgraceful. You sought to take advantage of crime elsewhere and transpose it to the peaceful streets of Northwich.’
Sutcliffe admitted a charge of organising an event capable of assisting in the commission of an offence, namely riot.
Judge Edwards told him: ‘You caused a very real panic and you put a very considerable strain on police resources in Warrington.
'You changed your mind and posted a retraction but it does not change the evil of the offences.’
Chaos: Riot police patrol the streets in Tottenham, on August 7. Both convicted men had sought to incite similar riots in their own towns
Chaos: Riot police patrol the streets in Tottenham, on August 7. Both convicted men had sought to incite similar riots in their own towns
Meanwhile in London yesterday, the 17-year-old daughter of a doctor was told she could face a lengthy jail sentence after she admitted taking a bottle of Lucozade from Poundland in Peckham during the riots.
The churchgoing youngster, whose mother is a nurse, faced Camberwell Magistrates Court after handing herself in.
Robust sentences for looters were defended by former Tory leader Michael Howard in the face of claims from former prison service boss Martin Narey that courts were handing out ‘savage’ punishments.
On Radio 4 yesterday, Lord Howard said the courts were right to respond to public demands that rioters should be jailed.
Offenders who were complaining about their punishments ‘should have thought of the consequences of their actions’, he said.
Lord Howard was responding to comments from Mr Narey, who said a ‘thirst for retribution’ meant young people who had committed petty crimes and were on the fringes of the riots had been punished too severely.
Instead, many should have been cautioned and told they ‘mustn’t get in trouble again’, he said.
Lord Howard said the punishments were ‘exactly what I would expect’ and were necessary to maintain public confidence in the justice system. ‘The courts don’t operate in a vacuum and shouldn’t operate in a vacuum,’ he said.
The father of new born baby has spoken of his battle to avoid rioters as he took his wife to hospital
‘What we saw last week was an absolutely appalling outbreak of violent behaviour, and it’s absolutely right that those who are responsible for that violent behaviour should be dealt with appropriately and that’s what the courts are doing.
In Birmingham, West Midlands Chief Constable Chris Sims called for ‘compassion’ for some of the rioters.
He said: ‘There are tragic offenders as well as tragic victims. Young people who have been in care for most of their lives. We need to show some compassion and be pragmatic about how we deal with these people.’
However, he added: ‘There has to be a deterrent to stop people thinking they can behave like this in future.’
