{"id":25648,"date":"2011-08-17T12:15:08","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T11:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=25648"},"modified":"2017-03-28T16:44:21","modified_gmt":"2017-03-28T15:44:21","slug":"four-year-jail-terms-for-facebook-riot-posts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=25648","title":{"rendered":"Four-year jail terms for Facebook riot posts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two men \u00a0jailed for four years over Facebook messages inciting disorder — their cases spark\u00a0criticism of \u00a0“disproportionate” sentences. Sara Yasin reports\"Jordan<\/a><\/strong>
\n
\nTwo young men were sentenced <\/a>to four years in prison for instigating rioting through Facebook yesterday.<\/p>\n

Jordan Blackshaw, 20, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22,\u00a0pled guilty<\/a> \u00a0to using the social networking site “to intentionally encourag[e] another to assist the commission of an indictable offence under sections 44 and 46 <\/a>of the Serious Crime Act 2007″.<\/p>\n

Judge Elgan Edwards, QC, the Recorder of Chester, said that he hoped the <\/a>sentences would deter any other potential looters. He said that their behaviour was “evil”, especially “at a time when collective insanity gripped the nation”.\u00a0Blackshaw and Sutcliffe-Keenan were caught after their events were reported by concerned users of the site.<\/p>\n

Emily Butselaar, Online editor of Index on Censorship said:\u00a0\u201cThese sentences and the government\u2019s rhetoric on banning social media during unrest are undermining our international reputation as a bastion of free expression and justice. The fact the Chinese state media have praised the UK government for suggesting such a ban should be\u00a0acutely embarrassing for No. 10.<\/p>\n

“In adopting a one-size-fits-all approach to sentencing, the courts have failed to recognise that these are very different cases. Sutcliffe-Keenan\u00a0claimed he created the Facebook event as a drunken joke. His post was only up for a matter of hours before he took it down and apologised online, whereas Blackshaw was arrested by police at the meeting place he\u2019d designated.<\/p>\n

“The sentences were imposed with the aim of deterrence but Index is concerned that the courts are in danger of undermining the UK\u2019s reputation for both justice and freedom of speech.\u00a0Even though these cases did not lead to violence, these \u201cspeech crimes\u201d have led to some of the harshest sentences seen following the riots in the UK last week.”<\/p>\n

The men did not know each other. Blackshaw, who will serve his sentence at a young offenders’ institution,\u00a0called upon his virtual friends to meet for a “lootin'”.\u00a0He created a\u00a0Facebook page entitled “Smash Dwn in Northwich Town”. Only nine of his 147 friends responded to the event and Blackshaw\u00a0arrived alone at the designated meeting place.\u00a0 He was met by police officers rather than fellow looters and was immediately arrested.<\/p>\n

On 9 August, Sutcliffe-Keenan created a page called “Let’s Have a Riot in Latchford”. A few hours later,\u00a0he took down the post. According to his lawyer, Rebecca Tanner, Sutcliffe-Keenan was drunk while posting the messages and quickly removed the event after “a phone call from a friend prompted him to remember his action”. Once he “realised the gravity” of his actions, Sutcliffe-Keenan removed the page and made a public apology.\u00a0No one turned up for the event, but 47 individuals confirmed their attendance on the page.\u00a0According to\u00a0prosecutors, the Facebook post still caused panic in the town.<\/p>\n

Tess Munt, MP for Wells, described the sentence as “bonkers”, and Andrew Neilson, director of campaigns for the Howard League for Penal Reform, claims that a sentence of four years would “normally be associated with serious and violent offences”, rather than an offence involving Facebook.<\/p>\n

Sara Yasin is an Editorial Assistant at Index on Censorship.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two men jailed for four years over Facebook messages inciting disorder — their cases spark criticism of “disproportionate” sentences. Sara Yasin<\/strong> reports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[136,117,2321,1721,2469],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25648"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25648"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88643,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25648\/revisions\/88643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}