To feel sorry for (and think the punishment is too long) for the 18 year old who threw the fire extinguisher in the protests

[LaurieFairyonthetreeEatsCake]

2 years, 8 months in jail

here

That's a looooong time. Is the reasoning supposed to be that it's a deterrent?

There are people with asbo's who cause no end of trouble and don't get sentences like this.

Sorry - to be clear - and having reflected on those other un-punished or lightly punished crimes, come out more bitter and anti-establishment than he was before he joined the student protests.

Result? No.

Good post blu much better than I could have put it.

My point about teenagers is that idiotic reckless behaviour is, unfortunately, not wildly unusual and that they are VERY susceptible to being riled up in the heat of the moment. I don't think they should be allowed to get away with it but it does influence judgement on whether one action makes them a dangerous criminal or not.

You know, quite apart from the long sentence he is going to have to serve (I think I heard that even if he is let out early, he'll still have to do 14 months), there's ANOTHER punishment this lad will have to take (well, two actually).
i) Unless I've got it wrong, he's been prevented from taking one of his A Levels. He was due to sit one of them on Friday. I hope the exam board will make arrangements to let him sit the exam at Feltham or elsewhere this week.

ii) I imagine he hoped for a place at university this coming October, given OK results in the four A Levels he was planning to take. Now, instead of having to accept a debt of about £10,000 for tuition fees (2011 entry) - he, like hundreds of thousands of younger sixth-formers, will have a likely £27,000 debt plonked on him for tuition. This government clearly thinks debt is absolutely fine and wants to encourage teenagers to run up debts.

I might have said this earlier in the thread, but the sentence was far too harsh. There was no way of proving he intended to injure anybody - he claims he saw a gap underneath; he may stupidly) have thrown the fire extinguisher to add to the shock effect of the demo.

I spoke to a policeman at the Nov 20 demo(I think it was) and he said the fire extinguisher fell two feet away from the nearest copper. Given a bit of poetic licence, it may have been four feet - five feet - six feet?

Doesn't make what he did unworthy of punishment though. I'd have sentenced him to a couple of weeks' incarceration at most, plus community service.

He was very young, very fired up. Community service would be a payback for his stupid and reckless behaviour. Sounds as if he is a decent boy who lost his head in the heat of the moment.

p.s: Any news re the likelihood of a criminal trial for the violent thug who put Alfie Meadows in intensive care following brain surgery (that was a cop at the 9 Dec demo, I think -) or the nasty piece of work at the 9 December demo who twice dragged a disabled student out of his wheelchair and pulled him along the ground?
Seems to me our police should be gone through with a toothcomb. There appear to be rather a lot of potentially dangerous psychos among them.
They are meant to be public servants.

'I think until you are parent to a teenager who has done something reckless and criminal but is not a bad person or a threat to society its very easy to pass black and white judgment. '

Psst.. we were all actually teenagers at some point.

Okay, then you will be campaiging to raise the age at which a person stands trial as an adult to 21 or greater?

Because we can't say, 'Oh, but you're an 18-year-old who was going to university so we will treat you differently from some other 18-year-old who is unemployed/left school with no qualifications/etc.'

It's either they're all considered adults at that age or they are not. People kill others in the heat of the moment, so consider this when lobbying to raise the age at which someone stands to face criminal charges as an adult.

And the difference between what he did and the actions of the Phil Greens of this world is that what Phil Green does is not a crime by legal definition.

So again, the solution is to make such things as tax avoidance illegal.

Still don't see the point of 'Well, custody is only for dangerous criminals.' Jeffrey Archer and David Chaytor are hardly violent offenders who pose a physical danger to society as a whole, but still a court determined their crimes merited a custodial sentence. In fact, some might argue what they did was far less grievious than hurling a fire extinguisher into a crowd from the top of the building.

Again, then lobby to make custodial sentences the reserve of those who are violent offenders then. In which case, this individual would still classify as such because his actions are quite different from spraying grafitti on a wall (also a criminal offense).

Just clicked on the link put up on p.18 (Wed 12 Jan, 14.17).
If you haven't looked at it, do. Shows VERY clearly that Edward Woollard must have been made an example of in order to scare other students. A screwdriver-wielding maniac in Blackburn got a significantly LIGHTER sentence than Edward Woollard did. Do look. British justice.

Lots of people called this lad 'stupid' and 'reckless'. I think he even called himself that, when attempting to mitigate his actions.

Better than having to admit you have a violent, cruel, nasty, murderous nature.

He did a really hateful, wicked thing, and then ran away to hide.

I feel really sorry for his Mum. She must feel really ashamed of him.

Maybe in the YOI he will be given some help to realise what a truly horrific thing he did, and to overcome his base urges in future

"...although he isn't likely to be a danger to the public"

Why do people keep repeating this and expect it to be taken at face value.
The only thing I know about this guy that is of relevance is the fact that at one point in his life he has decided to pick up a fire extinguisher and throw it at police officers and other citizens from 7 stories up.
He's already proven himself to be a danger to society.

'Why do people keep repeating this and expect it to be taken at face value.'

Because he's white, from a good neighbourhood and an A-level student.

Anybody who purposely throw a fire extinguisher from a great height into a crowd of people KNOWS full well it could probably kill someone. It's a bit psychopathic to me.

Think the second two parts are right, don't think the first one is.
As the example above shows. If it had been a white BNP protestor chucking the fire - extinguisher at a crowd of people below wouldn't get the sympathy.
And a black or indian kid who was middle-class and doing his A-levels would probably get equal amounts of sympathy.

dotnet wrote: "will have a likely £27,000 debt plonked on him for tuition"

You've taken the maximum possible (9K) as the 'norm' where that is hardly likely to be charged as a fee by every university. Indeed part of the competition for students may come down to which costs more and which costs less as well as the range of courses and reputation certain universities have...

"he said the fire extinguisher fell two feet away from the nearest copper. Given a bit of poetic licence, it may have been four feet - five feet - six feet?"

Check the link (clip shown on Sky News) I posted a little after midnight this morning, and then the one posted by KalokiMallow (BBC clip) and to me there was a significant movement made by the police (shown in the Sky clip, with the extinguisher on a trajectory definitely not straight down, to a space, but towards the police). I feel the police moved to get out of the way, but could be wrong. From the BBC clip, it didn't look like 6 feet to me. Did it to you, dotnet ?

Yes, a moment of madness, but to knowingly throw something as heavy as a fire extinguisher from 7 floors is impossible to excuse, and 2 weeks would be a complete joke, however much community service was added on.

Frankly I am still surprised it bounced and didn't explode. I had assumed the pressure was higher but perhaps the gas to push contents out is only released when activated.

theevildead2:

"I think most people here are imagining there children as the innocent protesters down below who could have been hurt. Because despite the coverage the vast majority of the protesters were peaceful. People like this guy were the minority. Why is that? Because at 18 most people know risking other's lives for their own amusement is wrong at worst wrong and potentially lethal and at best going to get them in a lot of trouble"

Yes, people like him are a minority who commit irrational acts in the heat of the moment. But considering that the human brain cannot fully make rational decisions during teen years, I can see why a heated protest could lead to an otherwise "normal" teenager being so reckless. I remember being 18 and I made plenty of stupid decisions then. None as bad as this but with hindsight you see that it is easy to make such stupid decisions at that age, especially in the heat of the moment.

www.actforyouth.net/documents/may02factsheetadolbraindev.pdf

I doubt it was for his amusement, was he of that nature then I am sure he would not have had a clean record at the time of this incident. But as records have shown, he is of a good character and this is the only thing he has ever done that has stood out.

As I have said before, I agree that there should be some form of punishment but I think this is too severe and a mockery considering others do worse and in a far more pre-meditated fashion and get away with a much lesser sentence.

www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23913889-fire-extinguisher-student-is-paying-too-high-a-price-for-his-idiocy.do

Hi Takver, if you're still looking at the thread!
The 'prep school like a young offenders' institution' thing...

I suspect prep schools are nothing like as horrendous now as they were in the '60s and '70s. I know boarding schools sound a lot better than when I unfortunately went to one in the 1960s!

I do believe Stephen Fry said a similar thing as was said by one of the 'Garden House' students - that when he was sent to Pucklechurch, he found it not that dissimilar from boarding school.

If the experience really might be akin to prep school of the 1960s - at least an 18 year old embarking on that is not going to be such a frail flower as a little boy of 7 or 8.

kungfupanda thanks for your insider's view about sentencing (12 Jan post at 10.55am). Well fancy that - so juveniles can't be awarded suspended sentences - how strange.

Sorry to hear you went through a deeply boring training course, now apparently wasted, all about 'Custody plus'!

'Frankly I am still surprised it bounced and didn't explode. I had assumed the pressure was higher but perhaps the gas to push contents out is only released when activated.'

He sprayed at least some of it off the side of the building before chucking the canister.

Perhaps this is why it didn't explode?

sorry haven't read the thread.

I feel sorry for the young man (that's what he is, not a boy anymore), but I think it is a fair judgement.

Thanks for that, expat - had not followed it too closely at the time and definitely saw nothing online or TV about it until I started looking yesterday.

Of course, rather than 'exploding' at full pressure, it could have 'just' launched the 'top' the way a bottle of coke can shoot the cap if shaken and then the cap unscrewed slowly... That would have been nasty for anyone on the receiving end if it had happened.

What Network Guy says....

Network, if you click the original link there's the Sky news vid clip on it and you can see it all pretty well.

He is a bloody idiot and deserves what he got.
He could have hit somebodys husband, father, etc.
I wish I could drop one on his head.

linksandsmileys stuff sounds sensible. Are you a lawyer?

networkguy I looked at the BBC news link of the dropping of the fire extinguisher and the voiceover said it landed a metre away from the nearest person.
Have you heard when the cop who injured Archie Meadows so seriously is going to appear in the criminal courts? I wonder how many years in jail he will get????
Those right wingers who think the long incarceration is a fine punishment for what Edward Woollard MIGHT have done etc etc, might reflect on the following:
Takver's link about the lives, post borstal and prison of student rioters in 1970 has Peter Household, a then history undegraduate (he was sentenced to a jail term in Wormwood Scrubs) saying:
'It was the first demonstration I'd been on - I was pretty useless.' In the same interview, he goes on to say, (after being sentenced) 'I knew there were people on the outside laughing at me. They were saying, that stupid Peter, he didn't know why he was there (ie at the demo) that night. I had two choices: I could either say 'Yes, this was a terrible accident' or I could come out with a reason as to why I was there. So although I had no strong political views when I went in, by the time I came out I was a hardened lefty - and remained so for the rest of my life.'
You'll be pleased with that as a possible result then, the handcuff swingers who are reading this?

"voiceover said it landed a metre away from the nearest person."

Well, that's worth remembering when you mention "poetic licence" and suggest it was perhaps 6 feet away.

I'd be unhappy that something weighing a stone (according to the original poster's link) came down even 6 feet from me, let alone 3 feet, if I knew it had had at least a 50 ft drop (thus coming down at speed - you saw the blur in some clips) and was likely to have had an impact as if it weighed quite a bit more than 1 stone.