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Thursday briefing: What we’ve learned about the UK riots – and their impact on the criminal justice system
By Archie Bland,
8 hours ago
Unrest in Sunderland on 2 August. Photograph: Drik/Getty Images
Good morning. Three weeks after the start of the riots that convulsed much of the UK, a clearer picture of the criminal justice system’s response is emerging – and it has a lot to tell us about the rioters themselves, and the ability of the police, the courts and the prisons to deal with unexpected crises.
The cases keep coming . Yesterday, among others, a man pleaded guilty to arson with intent to endanger life for his part in trying to set light to a hotel housing asylum seekers in Rotherham. Another – a former soldier who had carried out peacekeeping duties in Kosovo and Northern Ireland – was sentenced to two-and-a-half years for attacking police officers at the same location. And a third was sentenced to three years for his part in the Southport riot after he attacked a police van’s window with a piece of concrete as an officer sat inside.
To deal with all this, the government this week activated Operation Early Dawn, a set of emergency measures designed to prevent prison overcrowding. But that is a temporary solution, and the pressures created by the riots aren’t going away.
For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Cassia Rowland, a researcher focused on criminal justice at the Institute for Government, about what’s happening in the courts – and whether the system can handle it. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
Sextortion | International cybercriminals could face extradition in response to an alarming rise in the numbers of young people being targeted for sextortion , the National Crime Agency has said. The offence, which sees teenagers blackmailed after sharing intimate pictures, has been linked to gangs based in west Africa.
Italy | Divers scouring the wreck of the luxury yacht that sank off the coast of Sicily on Monday have found the bodies of five of the six missing passengers . The Italian coastguard was working to confirm the identities, with one person still unaccounted for.
Israel-Gaza war | Thousands of people facing Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have been forced to abandon plans to comply with orders telling them to move to a designated “safe humanitarian zone” because there is no space. 86% of Gaza has been put under evacuation orders by the Israeli military, according to the UN.
In depth: ‘This is a really serious challenge for the criminal justice system’
As the rioters (some of those who have pleaded guilty are pictured above) enter the criminal justice system, several crucial questions have surfaced: who are they exactly? Are they being treated fairly by the criminal justice system? And can the courts and the prisons cope with the additional pressure?
What is less complicated is the question of whether the public support the principle that rioting should be treated as an extraordinary event that needs to be dealt with forcefully. “On the whole, people back urgent measures and tougher sentences in these kinds of situations,” Cassia Rowland said. “It is true that riots are treated differently – but that is a deliberate decision designed to deter people from taking part, and it has a lot of support.”
Here’s what else you need to know.
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The sentences so far
Figures for England and Wales compiled by the BBC say that easily the most common offence is violent disorder, with 290 of 623 counts analysed. Of the 446 people whose charges were analysed, 407 are male. Of the 157 people who have been sentenced, 139 have been sent to prison, with the average sentence being two years. The average age of those charged is 32, with at least 46 under 18.
While the data is not yet available to say definitively how much the aggravating factor of the riots has increased sentences against the same offences committed in isolation, “it is clearly something that judges are taking into account”, Rowland said.
It’s worth noting that the cases processed so far are mostly those where offenders have pleaded guilty, and therefore receive an automatic reduction in sentence. Longer sentences are the preserve of the crown court, and many of the cases so far have been handled by magistrates. It should therefore be expected that those found guilty after a crown court trial will push the sentencing average up.
“It probably is quite important to get ‘headline’ sentences out early on when the disorder is still happening or may return,” Cassia Rowland said. “That is crucial for making the point to people thinking about joining in. So in that sense, the urgency has now diminished somewhat. It will be where trials are necessary and people are waiting for years that we start to see where the real problems with the criminal justice system lie.”
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The comparison with 2011
As significant as the recent disorder was, it was on a smaller scale than the most obvious comparator of recent years, the 2011 riots sparked by the killing of Mark Duggan. By last Sunday, the National Police Chiefs’ Council said that 1,165 arrests had been made; there were more than 3,000 arrests in 2011.
“There clearly is a big difference,” Rowland said. “It’s hard to put an exact number on, but I’ve seen realistic estimates that there are maybe a quarter as many people taking part.”
Many of the 2011 sentences were ultimately viewed by many as having been unnecessarily draconian, as with a man who happened to be walking past a shop being looted, helped himself to a case of water and was jailed for six months.
This time, too, “there definitely will be people who don’t have previous offences and were swept up in the heat of the moment and played a minor role”, Rowland said. But so far, few of the cases attracting heavy jail sentences meet that description.
“Judges may rely on sentencing established in 2011 when they’re making decisions,” she added. “But there will be differences – unlike 2011, a lot of people have been charged with racially aggravated offences, which can carry a significant sentencing uplift. And there has been more widespread sentence inflation since then. That will play a part in the outcomes as well.”
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‘Free speech’ and online offences
The most severe sentences handed down for online behaviour have been to those whose actions were deemed to have been an incitement to racial hatred. Tyler Kay, a 26-year-old from Northampton, got more than three years for calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set alight, for example.
With Elon Musk as their guide, many on the right have complained that these kinds of sentences are an affront to freedom of speech. In truth, British courts have long held that freedom of speech does not entitle people to incite violence. Part of the outrage may be due to a perception that online behaviour is somehow exempt from this general principle; these sentences may change that.
“I think most people have been aware for some time that online behaviour may be illegal,” Rowland said. “But they may not see that their own behaviour can qualify to be taken seriously as a criminal offence, especially in this kind of context.”
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Pressure on the courts
The riots came during a vexed period for the British legal system, which is still struggling to deal with pressures that were exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis. In May, the National Audit Office said that the backlog of cases in the crown courts stood at 67,573 last year – 78% higher than it was when the pandemic began.
In this piece looking at how the justice system is handling the riots, Rowland argues that the maximum sentence handed out by magistrates should be increased from six months to 12, to free up the crown courts. “This is a really serious challenge for the criminal justice system,” she said. “It’s going to be hard to manage both the trials and the resulting increase in the prison population.”
Police forces have been under significant pressure too. Beyond the initial workload of policing the riots, Rowland said, one overlooked aspect of the demand on their time is in the work sifting through evidence on smartphones. “There are already massive backlogs in digital forensics within the police – so they may just decide not to pursue some lines of inquiry. They have a huge amount of information to process.”
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Pressure on prisons
Many of those who plead not guilty will be remanded in custody, Rowland said, and those ultimately found guilty and jailed will further increase pressure on the prison system. “This is going to have a lasting impact as people serve out their sentences,” she said. “It’s not just a temporary shock.” The prison population stood at 87,893 against a usable capacity of 89,191 last week.
Partly in response to the riots, this week the government activated Operation Early Dawn, designed to alleviate pressure on prisons by delaying trials until a prison place is available. Labour has also announced a new early release scheme that will see thousands of inmates released after serving 40% of their sentence instead of the current 50%, but that is not expected to come into force until next month.
Rowland has proposed bringing forward the early release scheme to free up more space. “Early Dawn is an effective tool in the short term, but it doesn’t really solve the problem,” she said. “There is a very real possibility of significant unrest in a prison – the conditions for a riot are usually overcrowding, hot weather and prisoners with a sense of grievance. A lot of the people entering prison now are likely to feel that way, and they’ve already demonstrated their willingness to engage in violent disorder. That is going to be really difficult to manage.”
What else we’ve been reading
I loved this piece about Scotland’s forgotten girl bands , who are honoured in a new doc. Hannah J Davies, deputy editor, newsletters
My best shot , in which photographers reflect on one of their most memorable images, is always a pleasure. This week, Mike Abrahams talks about his picture of a baby looking at a letter during a lull in the Toxteth riots of 1981 (above): “It’s a picture full of ambiguous information, taken in the centre of a neighbourhood that rose up against an oppressive state.” Archie
Pack some earplugs, watch the sunset and – whatever you do – make sure you’re on flat ground: Rachel Dixon has all the tips to make camping into a wonderful bonding experience with friends and family , rather than the kind of trip that makes you want to block everyone you know. Hannah
Yvette Cooper’s plans on immigration contain elements that could be “signs of a fair and functioning system”, writes Zoe Williams – but by emphasising the Theresa May-lite elements, she risks falling into a trap: “Vindictive policy doesn’t heal divisions around immigration, but only deepens them”. Archie
Cricket | Sri Lanka recovered from a horror start which left them at 6-3, eventually reaching 236 before being bowled out on day one of the first Test at Old Trafford . England ended the day 22-0.
Football | American billionaire John Textor is in Liverpool to hold further talks with Everton owner Farhad Moshiri over a proposed takeover of the club, with a deal expected to be agreed by the end of the week .
Football | Raheem Sterling wants to leave Chelsea on a permanent basis after being frozen out by Enzo Maresca, who has denied that his treatment of the winger has been “brutal”. Sterling is among a group of 15 senior players, including Ben Chilwell, who are not part of the club’s future.
The front pages
“UK police threaten extraditions to tackle sextortion criminals” says the Guardian’s splash headline today. The Sicily yacht search is also on the front, and several other papers lead with it. “Divers find five bodies in wreck of superyacht” – that’s the Times , while the Daily Mail has “Superyacht hope lost as divers find five bodies”. The Daily Express says “Divers find bodies of tycoon and his daughter”. Top story in the Financial Times is “Public sector unions challenge Labour to repair losses from decade of pay cuts”. “Labour has no real plan to fix UK sewage crisis, Sharkey warns” – that being good-hearted river-loving Feargal, in the i . “Alzheimer’s wonder drug is given the go-ahead” reports the Daily Telegraph . “Mum and 3 kids killed in house blaze horror” – there has been an arson arrest over the fire in Bradford, the Daily Mirror says. In the Metro , it’s “Freedom of the Swiftie”, on calls for London to give Taylor Swift the freedom of the city.
Today in Focus
Venezuela and the president who won’t concede defeat
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Simon Taffe always loved music – he lied about his age as a teenager so he could DJ in clubs and went to countless gigs and festivals. He went on to operate a building and decorating business, but always with the idea that he wanted to do something in music. Then, watching an indie rock band at a festival, he wondered: could he do this? He and a friend worked out on the back of a cigarette packet what holding a festival might cost: £120,000. “Back at home in East Sussex, it felt like a drunken idea but I couldn’t shake it,” Taffe writes in this piece for the series A moment that changed me . “For the next couple of years, every time I went to a smaller festival, I thought: “I could do this.”
In fact, he could – and he did, helping to create the End of the Road festival. Though the festival had challenges – it lost £50,000 the second year – it kept going. “By the fourth year, the festival had just about become profitable and I started to pay the debts back.” Now End of the Road is still going strong: this year it will be held from 29 August to 1 September, and Taffe reports that the stress and anxiety has all been worth it to follow a musical dream.
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