The sentencing on Tuesday of Jordan Blackshaw, 21, from Northwich, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, to four years in jail has caused controversy and debate on both sides of the political spectrum. The hardline Tory desire to create examples of those being sentenced, has led to accusations that the judicary has been politicised. These accusations seem indisputable.
Magistrates and Judges are independent of government. To provide consistency the independent Sentencing Council sets guidelines, though judges can disregard them if they believe it allows the interests of justice to be served. Justice is the foundation of a fair society and when people lose faith in the Justice system's ability to doll out punishment proportional to the crime, we lose one of the key tennets of our democracy.
Should Blackshaw and Sutcliffe-Keenan face prison time? I would reason that prison is exactly the defining experience that will transform a miscreant impulse expressed on a social networking site into what will determine a young man's adult life. They will leave with a criminal record, making it hard for them to find employment, and far more likely to enter a permanent life of crime.
A four-year prison sentence approximates to that given in cases of grievous bodily harm or for holding someone at knifepoint. Were these two men's actions comparable to those crimes? I would argue that they were not.
Assistant Chief Constable Phil Thompson stated on Tuesday; "The sentences passed down today recognise how technology can be abused to incite criminal activity, and send a strong message to potential troublemakers about the extent to which ordinary people value safety and order in their lives and their communities."
Unfortunately, if facebook being 'abused to incite criminal activity' carries the danger of criminal sentencing then I know a great many people who should also be arrested. People I call 'friends' on facebook suggested shooting, neutering and staining with indelible ink suspected rioters. Is this not also incitement to criminal activity that should be punishable by law? Where is the line to be drawn?
Throughout the social media universe, during the riots, mass incitement was taking place on all sides; whether backing the police or the rioters themselves to become more violent, powerful and often regrettable sentiments where openly shared. Given this, I am afraid that we are in danger of finding scapegoats to make examples of without taking the broader reality of what took place online into account. As a friend of mine said, "If I read one more post asking the police to shoot the rioters I might leave Facebook altogether." I felt equally disgusted by some of the posts I read but, I thought, angry people post status updates, comments and links that they often wish they hadn't.
The real world, too, seems to be witnessing a bonfire of proportionality in courtroom judgements. Independence, impartiality and the ability to sentence on a case-by-case basis in the wake of the riots appears to have been all but abandoned. A senior magistrate was quoted on the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 as saying that "extraordinary times have led to extraordinary sentencing." Of that there can be no doubt.
According to the FT, Nicolas Robinson, a 23-year-old student with no criminal record, has been jailed for six months for stealing a £3.50 case of bottled water from Lidl in Brixton. I found this shocking. But possibly the most disproportionate sentence so far has been passed in Manchester, where mother-of-two, Ursula Nevin, has been jailed for five months for receiving a pair of shorts given to her after they were looted from a store. Allow me to emphasise the last point: five months in prison for accepting the gift of a looted pair of shorts.
What, I wonder, will happen in the five months Ursula Nevin is imprisoned to her children? Will they learn the lesson that Tories like David Cameron, Jeremy Hunt and Michael Howard believe they will? That there was no excuse for their mother to accept the gift of a pair of shorts obtained through criminal behaviour, and that her sentence sends a clear message that her behaviour was totally unacceptable? Or will they in fact grow up with a vehement hatred and mistrust of the establishment in all its guises because their mother was put in jail and branded as a criminal for life after accepting a pair of shorts?
Most disturbing of all is the idea that a rioter's entire family be ejected out of council housing with all their benefits cut off. Where will these people go? Will they roam the streets? With no private income and no benefit money how and where will they raise their children?
Resentment builds on resentment and creates a more deeply entrenched feeling among those being made examples of, that there are two societies: the ruling class and the underclass whose destinies, wellbeing and, heaven forfend, encouragement to reform and succeed, are as nothing to the need of the ruling class to satisfy a desire to punish, diminish and tarnish those who we should be most concerned with helping. We are moving further and further into a reprehensible response fuelled by anger and fear rather than by any desire to learn from, understand and, dare I say, move forward.
Throughout the riots and in the aftermath, social media was alive with popular postings, but one that came back again and again is an African proverb that I think sums up how I, and many others feel, "If the young are not initiated into the village, they will burn it down just to feel it's warmth."