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Police
officers lead away a man following a raid on a property in Pimlico
London August 11, 2011. (Credit: Reuters/Anthony Devlin/Pool) |
(Reuters) -
Tough prison sentences such as four years for trying to organize a riot via
Facebook have triggered alarm in Britain that the government's crackdown over
last week's unrest may be too harsh.
Britain's
Conservative Party, which leads a coalition government, has promised tough
action following four nights of violence in London and other cities to mend
what it has described as Britain's broken society.
Civil
liberties groups, legal experts and some politicians however say that
disproportionate sentencing could only fuel a sense of injustice.
"There's
no doubt that in certain circumstances a firm sentence is required," said
John Cooper, a senior crime and civil liberties barrister.
"What
concerns me is that the whole range of the sentencing process has been unduly
and disproportionately cranked up ... influenced implicitly or explicitly by
public opinion."
Many people
in Britain are outraged over last week's rioting and looting that caused
widespread damage and was linked to the deaths of at least four people.
Some agree
with harsh sentencing, but worry they have been imposed under political
pressure.
"You
should judge every individual case on its merits and every person on the basis
of what they've actually done, rather than this creep toward .... judicial
activism, where politicians put undue influence on the judiciary," said
Daniel Hamilton, director of Big Brother Watch, which campaigns for civil
liberties.
DISPROPORTIONATE
PUNISHMENTS
In London,
more than 1,000 people have been charged with crimes connected to the riots,
which also spread to the cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and
Bristol.
On
Wednesday, media reported that a young man had been given a four-year jail term
for setting up a page on social networking site Facebook calling on people to
riot in his home town.
Another
young man received the same sentence elsewhere in England for a similar
offence.
No riots
broke out in the areas the men came from, and one media report said one of the
young men had woken with a hangover the next day, deleted the web page and
apologized.
"It's
very tempting for everybody to get carried away with the rhetoric and saying we
should round up these monsters and deal with them draconically. What you're
going to get if you start sentencing disproportionately is all sorts of
anomalies," said Roger Smith, director of law reform group Justice.
He compared
the young men's four-year prison term to a likely two years for breaking
someone's leg in an assault.
Media
outlets reported than one man had been jailed for six months for stealing
bottled water worth 3.5 pounds ($5.78) from a supermarket looted during the
riots.
Britain's
Criminal Bar Association said that while it would be wrong to punish all crimes
harshly because they were committed during the riots, judges and magistrates
should be allowed to give higher sentences for a crime depending on the context
in which it was committed.
"Judges
are entitled to conclude that these crimes have a number of aggravating
features, born from the circumstances of the case, which mean that the
sentences can and should be higher," the body's Vice Chairman Max Hill
said in a statement.
But others
argue that harsh sentencing for less serious crimes devalues punishments for
more serious offences.
The
Conservatives have defended the harsh sentencing, saying the sentences should
act as a deterrent to others.
"What
happened on our streets was absolutely appalling behavior and to send a very
clear message that it's wrong and it won't be tolerated is what our criminal
justice system should be doing," Prime Minister David Cameron said.
But even
his coalition partners the Liberal Democrats are distancing themselves from his
approach. For less serious crimes, they advocate punishments such as helping to
repair riot damage and being forced to meet victims of the disorder.
"Short
prison sentences for relatively petty offences go against the Ministry of
Justice's own evidence that shows that short prison sentences are very ineffective
at reducing reoffending," said Tom Brake, co-chair of the party's
committee on home affairs, justice and equalities.
Other
critics say also say the zero tolerance approach could be self defeating, given
that Britain's prisons are already overflowing at a time of strained public
finances.
"We
have doubled our prison population since the mid-1990s and seen tougher and
tougher measures introduced each year, with an abundance of criminal justice
legislation. Yet despite all this, the outcome of being 'tough on crime' was
some of the worst street disturbances seen in decades," said Andrew
Neilson of the Howard League of Penal Reform.
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