Anyone feeling slightly uncomfortable with the scale of the sentencing after the riots?

Nope. I for once think Labour are doing a great job here.
And I’m not a Labour voter

But some woman mouthing off on Facebook just the once is sentenced for over a year!

It wasn't mouthing off. She posted this:

"It’s absolutely ridiculous. Don’t protect the mosques. Blow the mosque up with the adults in it.”

Minimising what she typed - inciting murder - is abhorrent.

I've always struggled with it. There's a large part of me that wants to throw away the key. But we studied this - how seriously offending kids across Europe are treated, and it's pretty undeniable that they aren't cognitively developed enough to understand properly what they have done, and that outcomes societally are better if that is accepted and they are treated and worked with. I was haunted when the boys were freed, as I had a child the age James Bulger had been and it was so awful, realising what he had suffered and looking at a three year old. And his mother's suffering, too. But I'd want the death penalty if it were one of mine, too, and I know that's not logically right or effective. You have to separate out the two.

I'm so sorry for your mum. She must have had so much wish she'd realised and been able to intervene. I remember feeling that way, living miles away and only being a teenager myself, so God knows how someone close by felt.

@perfectstorm

I agree with you
Many people wouldn't though.
He was found on the railway line just behind my mum's house, it's always been a difficult one for me, so close to home

Hopefully he will go to prison. If people plead not guilty there has to be a trial and that takes longer - however, if found guilty after pleading not guilty they are likely to receive longer sentences.

These thugs are lucky that police offers didn’t lose their lives during these riots. They would have been facing much more serious charges.
I have often been very critical of the police. However, i was alarmed at the blatant disrespect and recklessness exhibited by these vile thugs attacking police officers who were simply doing their job
It is also not an exaggeration to say that many

POC feared for their lives after witnessing the break down of law and order.
My niece works at an international Summer school . The students were afraid to leave their accommodation during the riots. Parents were frantically phoning the school as they were concerned about the welfare of their children.

Name, shame and jail all these racist thugs.

Yes, it should have done. It doesn't mean you don't intensively treat and support them, and that that is likely to mean restricting their freedom for at least some time, it means you try to do just that, instead of punish, because they are kids and by definition can't understand, think or reason as an adult can be expected to do.

In point of fact we studied that case as part of my degree - it was a youth offending paper - and our response in holding them criminally responsible was hugely out of kilter with the other nations. All countries have kids who kill, on occasion. They are almost always treated, not punished, in countries without the death penalty, and intense efforts made towards rehabilitation. Because a child is not an adult, and they don't magically become one just because they do something truly horrific.

I don't pretend I would want that if it were my child - I would be out for blood - and that is an especially horrendous case, because of the scale of what they did to that little boy. But sometimes following the evidence of what actually works flies in the face of what our gut instincts want to do. And the whole point of being a civilised country is to try to do what works and is effective, instead of venting the very human and comprehensible urge for revenge. It's why we no longer execute even the worst murderers.

A large proportion of them had lists of previous convictions.

FFS- Chris Grayling is a Lord ? He’s going to the House of Lords ? What on earth ? It’s bloody cronyism again !

No, I'll tell you what. Wait and see how you feel when your parent is stuck in a care home being deliberately dehydrated by the State because that's the sly method of euthanasia, and you have to go in daily to give them drink to stop them dying, and Surrey's Adult Safeguarding go after you to exact revenge because you take a failing care home to the press, and they do this with complete impunity, using your elderly parent as bait.

I don't have to wait for that, but don't expect anyone to get into trouble - the perpetrators are all still in their job and our local MP Chris Grayling whom we consulted and eventually treated me with sarcasm and contempt has since stepped down and now has a peerage!

But some woman mouthing off on Facebook just the once is sentenced for over a year!

Perhaps they should have thought twice. I read about an older man getting his prison sentence and being all, 'I can't cope!'

Fucking don't riot, then. I have zero sympathy.

He wasn’t the Prime Minister then. He may well have advised the coalition government to take a hard stance on the 2011 riots.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Things like that affect many of us personally and if you have experiences like yours, you don’t want this happening to you again.

The public areas are an extension of our homes. Your home may not have been smashed up or burnt, but what happened made you feel unsafe in your home area, and places that formed a part of your daily life were destroyed, right? Especially as a child, feeling safe on your streets is important and a right the gov has to protect.

I was caught up in one of the early online-driven riots involving 1000s of people. Public transport was cut off so I couldn’t get home, so was stuck in an area of ethnic tension and violence as a young girl and scared for my physical safety. It created ethnic division overnight so my best friend stopped talking to me or anyone who was white overnight, it was us vs them at school, with white and minority ethnic kids sitting separately after being good friends 10+ years. A member of gov lived on my street so we had 24/7 armed special forces outside and a sniper on the roof.

I don’t think this is how anyone wants to live.

Online posts don’t just spontaneously appear in events like these in 2024. Yes, useful idiots jump on the bandwagon, but bot accounts and coordinated amplification is very real. So people that post online to set specific buildings on fire and naming individuals without any evidence… Sorry, they aren’t innocent, their actions quite possibly caused more damage than any individual in-person rioter.

Considering that Starmer’s wife and children are Jewish and that the anti-genocide protests didn’t involve setting synagogues on fire, I don’t think it’s double standards.

Those children will get a slap on the wrist and as they are minors it most likely won’t impact their future careers but hopefully it will get them thinking twice about being little shits.

Many of my friends and most of my work colleagues are predominantly Asian. They have been so very sad and upset at the riots and the language and hate they see as being directed at them. They are the most lovely group of people and I'm heartbroken for them.
A few of them have young teenagers who have been too scared to go to the park or shops because of the riots and a couple have shown signs of anxiety that are new.
We need to come down hard on racism and rioters.
However with the young ones I think education and safe and well checks are in order. We live near one of riots and my kids are loved, never racist and well cared for. They weren't allowed out. The parents of these youngsters need the punishment for failing them.

This

Being autistic should not be an excuse for committing crime, nor having the same punishment no excuse should be

Haven’t read the thread but I think these sentences were the right thing to do.

The possibility of the riots escalating and overwhelming the police and authorities was very real; a breakdown of law and order on a large scale across the country. The violence could have escalated very fast in a very nasty way. This is what the agitators wanted, and the consequences should that breakdown have happened would have been devastating- it felt very close to that happening before the counter protests happening that Wednesday night.

So a clear signal that anyone involved in such actions will be harshly dealt with was exactly the right thing to do for the wider security and peace of the country.

As long as you haven’t called for asylum seekers to be murdered on Facebook or for hotels to be burned down, you have nothing to be concerned about.

Tell you what - you wait and see how you feel if your husband/son/brother had their jaw broken or bricks pelted at them when they were just trying to do their jobs......

Thought so.

Yes, I agree with the OP. I am sort of impressed with the speed of sentencing - not that that stops some Tory supporters claiming it's all Sir Keir's fault on being elected! - but it reminds me of Mick Jagger's sentencing for drug possession in 68 or thereabouts where it was successfully argued - by Jacob Rees-Mogg's Dad in fact - that he got a far stiffer sentence for being famous, and to be made an example of, because of his influence, and that's not how justice should work.

But you'll be advised not to hold your breath waiting for the likes of the Post Office's Paula Vennells to come before the court, those complicit with the contaminated blood scandal, Grenfell prosecutions and so on - in fact, any State operative will get let off, I'd be far more impressed if Sir Keir applied the law in those areas but as he is not going ahead with Leveson 2 then I can't see it yet.

The State applies the law to uphold the power and authority of the State - but use the law to hold the State to account? Don't be soft!

That is not the case and there are many paedophiles with long prison sentences or on remand awaiting trial.

I think it's good, and amazing to see the justice system is able to move so fast. A pity it's crap for everything else, murderers out after a few years, rapists getting a slap on the wrist. It should be a lot tougher and faster acting. Oh and they should stop using the words 'life sentence' because it isn't anymore, it's a nonsense when they say XX was sentenced to life, with a minimum of 10 years.

No, it serves then right