UK Men Get 4 Years For Trying to Incite Riots Via Facebook

An anonymous reader writes "In addition to the 12 arrests from last week, a judge has sentenced 20-year-old Jordan Blackshaw and 22-year-old Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan to four years in prison for their failed attempts to use Facebook to incite riots in the UK. The judge said he hoped the sentences would act as a deterrent. The two men were convicted for using Facebook to encourage violent disorder in their hometowns in northwest England."

Comments

Re:It's a crime to attempt a crime, or incite othe

[Yvanhoe]

Where is the limit with political speech ? Is that forbidden to state the opinion that violent action is the only way to bring change in a corrupt system ? Not that I defend this opinion, but the fact that is is censored disturbs me deeply.

Re:No sense at all

[amck]

The current ConDem government is making dramatic cuts in these deprived areas. In the areas around London where the riots occured, youth unemployment pushes 20-30%, practical illiteracy near 40%. The ComDem government has been introducing 'austerity' measures, removing grants to support schools making attending high school equivalent infeasible for many poorer, closing down the youth clubs, etc.
Local groups have been pointing out that the neighbourhoods have been near riot for months now.

On top of this, they're making large cuts in the police. So when the riots came, the police retreated to just protecting the stations: they didn't have the resources to deal "properly" with riots. The vast majority of arrests have been for looting, etc. : opportunistic crimes , evidence from CCTV and those picked up by cops as the riot cools down, not during the riots themselves. Given the amount of property that burned, the tiny numbers arrested for arson, etc. are remarkable.

So the cops (and government) are relying on fairly brutal policing (when they find you) and hard sentences to deter people from rioting, rather than fixing the problems on the ground (either socially or with proper policing).