Some men are not as guilty as others

[mcgillianaire]

A few days ago I wrote about Nicholas Robinson, a twenty-three year-old electrical engineering student from south London who was sentenced to six months in prison because he stole a crate of water worth £3.50 from a Lidl store in Brixton. He had no previous convictions but the magistrate handed him the maximum penalty for his part in the "chaos". However it is worth noting that following the parliamentary expenses scandal in which hundreds of MPs were named and shamed by the Telegraph, none of the parliamentarians that have been convicted so far, received more than a sixteen month prison sentence. Indeed two of the criminals that were sentenced for twelve months made false accounting claims of £11200 and £6000 each. It seems patently unfair that an individual with no criminal record and whose only role in the riots was to pick up a crate of water, received half the sentence of a parliamentarian who had hoodwinked the British taxpayer for a much larger amount and over the course of several years. Perhaps you disagree with me. Either way, it's worth thinking about.

Comments

[loganberrybunny.livejournal.com]

What's really needed is a calm and sensible debate about sentencing. Good luck with that in the nation of the Daily Mail...

[mcgillianaire.livejournal.com]

Exactly! Unfortunately it'll never happen.

[elodie21.livejournal.com]

Certainly worth thinking about! I guess they are using him as an example and deterrent to others. But that certainly does not make the punishment fair. And letting off the MPs with such light sentences just encourages more fraudulent activity on their part.

[mcgillianaire.livejournal.com]

I'm not wholly against severe punishments so long as the sentences delivered across crimes were consistent and proportionate to the crime committed. Unfortunately we've now got the news that the magistrates were given a diktat to throw the sentencing guidelines out the window altogether. It makes a mockery of the rule of law, something which distinguishes this country from many others that it berates and at times, attacks for lacking in sufficient quantities. The real test of democracy and the rule of law is how it functions in troubled times, not when everything is rosy.

As for the expenses scandal, I think the public naming and shaming by the Daily Telegraph will have put some degree of fear into the remaining parliamentarians to avoid such behaviour in the future but you never know, they are politicians after all. A leopard can't change its spots. From a legal and people's perspective, I think it was rather unfortunate that the courts did not (either out of lack of courage/powers) come down as heavy on the worst offenders as they are currently doing with the rioters.

Going back to the chap who was jailed for stealing a crate of water. I had posted earlier about a guy who stole clothes from Burberry but for whatever reason even managed to avoid paying the fine imposed by the judge after spending two days in custody while waiting for his case to be heard. Of course, I don't know the full details and facts of either case so one cannot draw proper conclusions but on the basis of what was printed in the media, it's difficult not to feel somewhat sorry for the water thief. Was it a stupid thing to do? Yes but thanks to the laws of this country, his conviction will not become spent until seven years after serving his sentence. During those seven years he will have to mention his conviction on any job application and even after that he will have to mention it for certain types of jobs.

[elodie21.livejournal.com]

Just comparing the severity of sentencing in UK and India is astounding- 7 yrs for stealing water (but of course in larger context it was against the rioting) while here Maria Susairaj gets away with 3 years for aiding in the murder of Neeraj Grover. My skepticism grows...!

Going to how the riots started, sporadic incidents grew into full fledged riots (after death of Mark Duggan)? I guess that was just the spark, maybe underlying it all, racial tension may have flared given the grim economic scenario...

[mcgillianaire.livejournal.com]

7 yrs for stealing water
It was 6 months! Bad enough I think. :)

Maria Susairaj gets away with 3 years for aiding in the murder of Neeraj Grover
Unfortunately I don't know much about this case.

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As for the riots, I don't think there was a racial element to it. Although the single largest group may have been people of Black parentage, it was quite clear that people from all backgrounds were involved, including Whites, Asians, Turks, Eastern Europeans, you name it. I think the riots grew because the police were not hands-on enough on the first night itself. The problem for them was that with all the criticism they had received in recent years following allegations of heavy-handedness and the lack of support from seniors in cases involving manslaughter and other such charges of junior colleague, they were probably not keen on adding one more event for the media and public to target them with. For that I cannot really fault them because that's an issue that needs to be dealt with by the public, media, the police and within themselves. Even during the worst excesses of the student protests and public sector cuts demonstrations, the police managed to handle the situation and things did not spiral out of control.

But on the night of the protest against Mark Duggan's death they probably did not expect the response to turn violent in the form of burning cars and burning buildings. Those images were beamed live and I think it was at that point, the various gangs in London identified an opportunity to create havoc. There are dozens, if not 100+ gangs around Greater London, many of them based or working out of several of the main areas that witnessed the rioting.

Though they usually maintain an underground and low profile away from the mainstream, on that night they chanced their luck. These gangs are not entirely segregated from mainstream society and retain links with many youths who are either related to or friends with gang members. Through the use of BBM, the gangs managed to drop their rivalries with other gangs and coordinate ad-hoc looting in a narrow band of properties and shops across a 3-4 mile strip in north London a few hours after the initial rioting at the scene of where the original protest had ended earlier in the evening.

As they did this, a mixture of youthful exhuberence and peer pressure enticed these youngsters to take part in the looting. They did not think about the consequences of their actions, many of them probably didn't care. There was safety in numbers and with the police taken by surprise, they grew in confidence as word spread about their antics in Tottenham Hale shopping centre and Wood Green High Street. Sure some people may have held serious grievances against the government but this was not a political or economic protest. It was sheer opportunism spawned by a timid police force that failed to respond adequately to a volatile situation.

The police should've adopted riot tactics rather than demonstration tactics. It didn't help that the senior members of the government both for London and the country didn't take the issue seriously until copycat looters have wreaked havoc on a national scale. The lack of coordination between the police and senior cabinet members in this regard contributed in a large way to the continuous rioting that took place on subsequent days.

In some ways what happened on the second night fooled the police into thinking that things were calming down but it was almost a case of the calm before the storm. Even till the early hours of the evening of the third night it was not certain the PM would return to London. That I think was a fatal mistake. Tragic as the deaths were of the four who perished as a result of the riots, we should count ourselves lucky that there were no other fatalities. It really could've been worse.

Once the police presence grew in numbers things began to calm down. It probably also didn't help that kids were on summer holidays so they were more than free to go on the rampage on the third night (a Monday). One notable MP was reportedly caught on TV asking "why weren't these kids at school". Just shows how out-of-touch some of these useless buggers are.

Any ways, that's just how I saw it... probably completely wrong!