In September 2012 the Ministry of Justice issued an updated statistical bulletin on arrests and sentences related to the uprising in English cities, which followed the following the police killing of Mark Duggan on 4 August 2011. As of 31 August 2012, there were 606 people in prison (including those on remand) on riot-related charges; a further 837 who had been given custodial sentences had already been released.
By August 2012, 3,103 people had appeared before the courts: 2,138 (69%) were found guilty and sentenced; another 16% were dismissed or acquitted. Of those sentenced 1,405 (66%) were given immediate custody with an average sentence length of 17.1 months. This compares to an average sentence of 3.7 months for those convicted at magistrates’ courts for similar offences in England and Wales in 2010.
This use of ‘exemplary sentencing’, whereby the courts add extra time onto, for example, a burglary conviction, on the specific basis that it was committed in the context of ‘public disorder’, has been endorsed by the government and, according to The Guardian’s ‘Reading the Riots’ study, most prosecutors. However, the Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer publicly doubted the effectiveness of this, instead espousing a different and equally dubious facet of the way people were treated in the weeks immediately following the August riots, claiming that the speed with which defendants were brought before the courts was more of a deterrent than the sentence lengths.
Birmingham
On 9 August 2011, four day’s after Mark Duggan’s death, the uprising spread to other cities throughout England. In Birmingham, designer shops were stripped of their goods and a police station in Handsworth was set on fire. There were 130 arrests that night and 736 by December. By 10 August 2012, 334 people in the West Midlands had appeared in court on riot-related charges.
Most trials in the Birmingham courts have followed the same pattern as in London and elsewhere, with punitive prison sentences for adults and referral orders for juveniles, for robbery, burglary, violent disorder, receiving stolen goods and assaulting police officers. Five 13-year-olds and one 12-year-old have been among those convicted, with one 13-year-old boy being sentenced to a six-month Detention and Training Order for affray.
However, there have also been two specific major cases related to the events of August 2011 in Birmingham, where the local West Midlands Police have a longstanding reputation for brutality, corruption and attempts to frame prisoners on spurious evidence.
Firstly, at two separate trials in June and October seven men and a teenage boy were convicted of riot, reckless arson and possession of firearms with intent to endanger life and sentenced to terms of between 12 and 35 years imprisonment. Two women received sentences of five and seven and a half years for possession of weapons. The court was told that the men convicted were part of an armed group of 40 who petrol-bombed a pub in Aston in order to draw the police to the area, and that they then shot at police officers on the ground and at a police helicopter. None of the police were injured.
The other trial concerned the alleged murder of three Asian Muslim men, who died as a result of having been hit by a car which mounted the pavement, where they and others were guarding shops from looters. In the wake of the riots they were hailed by the media and police as heroes in a stark turnaround from the prevailing stance of suspicion and accusations of terrorism generally directed towards the Muslim community.
Whether because of this desire to create heroes who ‘stood up to the rioters’, or out of a wish to fuel longstanding tensions between Birmingham’s black and Asian communities, or for some other reason, the police went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that eight men who were in three cars in the vicinity, rather than just the driver of the car which hit the three victims, were prosecuted for murder and conspiracy to murder. Potential witnesses were offered deals that if they gave evidence against the accused, they would not be prosecuted for any criminal behaviour of their own during the riots. This was only revealed to the court ten weeks into the hearing, following which the trial was close to being aborted, but resumed after three days of legal argument. So sensitive was the case considered to be, however, that the judge issued an injunction which prevented the BBC broadcasting two documentaries on the riots until the trial was over.
The judge instructed the jury to first consider the case against Ian Beckford, the driver of the car, who had given evidence that the deaths were an accident, before considering the charges against the other defendants. Once they decided whether he was guilty of murder or manslaughter, or not guilty, they could consider the charges against the remainder of those in the dock. On 19 July, after just four hours, the jury acquitted all eight of all charges.*
Thought crime in Wales
In FRFI 225 we reported on three cases where young men were sent to prison simply for posting on facebook. In yet another such case, on 10 October in Cardiff Anthony Gristock was imprisoned for three years and seven months under the Serious Crime Act 2007 for having created a facebook page called ‘Bring the riots to Cardiff’, which advertised an event entitled ‘Riot, Looting and Burglary at Cardiff County Council’. Jamie Counsel had earlier been imprisoned for four years for related offences. The prosecution case against Anthony Gridstock included statements he had posted on the page, such as: ‘Government officials, police, politicians are the same big gang of people; they don’t understand the poor and vulnerable.’
Nicki Jameson
*Information from Miscarriages of Justice UK
