“It seems that we missed a major opportunity for restorative justice”
This is a guest blog by Penelope Gibbs, Director of Transform Justice, originally published under the title “I just went to be nosy”: children, punishment and the 2024 riots.
Is there any point using deterrent sentences after the event? During the summer riots, which followed the murders of three girls in Southport, the police and the judiciary felt they had to act fast. Many adults and children were arrested and processed through the courts at record speed. And with tough justice – use of police detention, remand and punitive sentences.
It’s not clear whether law enforcement needed to be so tough in order to stop the riots, but the riots did stop fairly quickly and the prosecutions didn’t. Since the peak, when hundreds of people were arrested on the spot, the police spent months carefully analysing CCTV and other evidence and charged scores more. Among them were many children.
There had been little detail about the child rioters until the Children’s Commissioner published a report in January, the result of months of research and interviews with 14 children involved in rioting. Its findings (albeit based on a small sample) challenge the media narrative – that child rioters were wrong‘uns motivated by far right views.
Rather than being motivated by racism or an opposition to immigrants, many of the children interviewed said they had been drawn in by adults, relishing in the excitement. Others were curious, and perhaps bored, attracted by a social media post advertising a ‘peaceful protest’. One child said “I didn’t really know what it was about. I just went to be nosy because it seemed like a big thing happening in my local area.” Many of the children interviewed by the Children’s Commissioner had been diagnosed with ADHD, the symptoms of which include impulsivity, difficulty in resisting temptation, and risk-taking behaviours.
“The media said ‘far right thugs’ – that was a bit extreme. Half the young men there don’t even know what far right means. We’re in such a deprived area…they don’t even know what politics means. They were just there to have fun.”
– Child, charged in the 2024 riots.
A few months ago, a newspaper reported the case of a girl who had been convicted for her part in the riots months after they took place. She was just thirteen when she got swept up in a riot in Basingstoke. On the day, she followed adults to an asylum seekers’ hotel and CCTV revealed her kicking the door. Once she was arrested a couple of months later, the police could easily have offered her a conditional caution – an out of court resolution which involves doing a programme/paying compensation/taking part in restorative justice. As it is, they charged her with racially aggravated violent disorder, she pleaded guilty and got sentenced to a referral order, which will probably have involved her doing the same activities as if she had received a conditional caution. And the sting in the tail is that, because she was convicted, the offence will now appear on higher level DBS checks until she is 100.
By the end of October, 84 children had been charged and presumably many more have been charged since for their part in the riots. Some were held on remand and served custodial sentences. But why were so many children like the thirteen year old girl prosecuted and convicted when the youth justice system has a proud record of resolving crime out of court? Most of the harmful behaviour committed by children could have been addressed by education and welfare services. Particularly if the child was arrested months after the riots. Instead children appear to have been subject to tougher punishment than their peers – 13 year olds accused of much more serious offences than the girl swept up in the riot are frequently dealt with by police out of court.
On the other hand, in the wake of the Commissioner’s report three racial justice organisations criticised it for ignoring the harm the riots did to children and young people from minoritised ethnic communities. More recently the very real suffering of asylum seekers as a result of the riots featured in a report from the Mental Health Foundation. Mark Rowland, the chief executive, said: “The racist riots of summer 2024 had a terrible impact on the mental health of many people seeking asylum in [the] UK. Some people told us they were scared to leave their accommodation, risking increased isolation, and others said they feared they’d be attacked walking down the street just because of the colour of their skin.”
Criminal justice is not a zero sum game. It can be the case both that children were punished too harshly for their involvement in the riots and that victims’ harm was not properly addressed. It seems that we missed a major opportunity for restorative justice. We should have brought the children who rioted together with the victims of the riots so victims could tell the children why incidents like a kick on the door of an asylum seekers’ hotel did such damage. All this could have been done out of court, thus preventing children ending up with a life-long criminal record.
Why me?, in partnership with The Faith and Belief Forum and Interfaith Glasgow, have published a report on a similar topic, exploring UK Summer Riots 2024: Restorative Responses and Interfaith Instincts.