You may find Just Stop Oil annoying. You may dislike their tactics. But they do not belong in prison | Chris Packham and Dale Vince

There’s a crisis in our prisons. Keir Starmer says it is “ shocking ”. Our jails are so full, police chiefs are warning it may soon be impossible to maintain even the most basic law and order. So here’s a radical proposal. Let’s stop locking up our truth tellers. The people who are shouting “fire” because there’s a fire. When they see we’re not moving fast enough and that the flames are getting higher, they know their responsibility is to shout out the message louder. Because they care. You probably know who we mean.

These people might be annoying. They might give you an earache. We might wish they would tone it down. But in a democratic society, they do not belong in prison. We need to be listening to them, not locking them up.

And we’re not just talking here about the courageous Whole Truth Five (WTF), the Just Stop Oil protesters who were jailed yesterday for 21 years between them, each locked up for longer than some people are for committing serious sexual assaults. People who took direct action to try to end the former government’s insane and deadly policy of “maxing out” on oil and gas reserves.

On just one day in 2022, 50 people were jailed for breaching an injunction obtained by Valero, a US-based oil company. One of them was Dr Sarah Benn, a GP and NHS doctor of more than 30 years, who served the British public on the frontline during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her crime? She held a sign saying “Stop new oil” on injuncted land. Another, Xavier Gonzalez-Trimmer , was a young man who took peaceful direct action, in accordance with science, trying to stop the mass loss of life that carbon emissions are causing. In between appearances at inner London crown court, he took his own life in February 2023. The coroner’s inquest heard evidence of the traumatic impact of his time in jail.

In February and March 2023, three people were jailed after saying the words “ climate change ” and “ fuel poverty ” in court, contrary to the judge’s direction that they should not use these words. And in April the same year, two people, Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker , were jailed for three years and two years and seven months respectively, for dropping a banner saying “Just Stop Oil” from the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge at the Dartford crossing, causing delays to traffic. Decker, who is a German national, now faces deportation , even though his family life is here.

Complete madness. It is a disgrace and a stain on our country that our courts have been co-opted to do the fossil fuel industry’s dirty work.

At the start of the WTF trial, the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, Michel Forst, had warned that the prospect of a two-year prison sentence was “not only appalling but may also violate the United Kingdom’s obligations under international law”. The judge, Christopher Hehir, was shown the UN statement. What was his reaction? To issue four- and five-year sentences. Such obvious contempt for international law should have no place in our courts.

Forst issued another statement yesterday, immediately after the verdict. “Today marks a dark day for peaceful environmental protest, the protection of environmental defenders and indeed anyone concerned with the exercise of their fundamental freedoms in the United Kingdom,” it read.

It is not only the UN that has spoken out. It is the scientific community, too. The judge had banned the defendants from introducing any evidence of the climate crisis into the proceedings. He excluded a witness statement from one of the leading experts on climate impacts, Prof Bill McGuire. McGuire has issued a public statement that doesn’t pull punches: “The judge’s characterisation of climate breakdown as a ‘matter of opinion and belief’ is completely nonsensical and demonstrates extraordinary ignorance. Similarly, to suggest that the climate emergency is ‘irrelevant’ in relation to whether defendants had a reasonable case for action is crass stupidity.”

One of us (Chris) knows one of the defendants, Cressie Gethin , personally. Cressie is a brilliant and fearless young woman, a music student at Cambridge University. It’s madness to be locking up people such as Cressie for taking on the might of the fossil fuel industry. An industry that has not just polluted our land, air and waters, but has corrupted our democracy with its money and misinformation for so long. This cannot go on. What’s happening is shameful and unlawful.

We have a new government, and a new attorney general, Richard Hermer KC , a highly regarded human rights barrister with a deep respect for international law. We suspect he will be as disturbed personally as we are by the events at the crown court yesterday.

That is why we are calling for an urgent meeting with him, to be recorded so it is transparent to the public, to discuss not just Cressie’s case, but the jailing of all our truth tellers and their silencing in court.

• Chris Packham is a naturalist, environmental and animal welfare campaigner, author and television presenter on BBC Two’s Springwatch

• Dale Vince is a green energy industrialist and campaigner and a Labour party donor

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