alt Hacker News> UK showed how to deal with civil disobedience (fast tracked judicial process)
What is it you mean by this?
I see so many offhand comments about the dystopian UK here but AFAICT there’s a lot of noise and very little meat. The only thing I can think you mean is the UK is currently debating a bill to limit jury trials to more serious offences. While I do find that pretty offensive, there’s nothing fast track about any of its justice system at the moment.
On the contrary, people are waiting years for trial, which is bad for the accused because they have it hanging over them, and bad for victims who get no swift resolution.
Replies
Presumably the 2011 riots: a college student with no criminal record was jailed for six months for stealing a £3.50 case of bottled water [0]
Or perhaps our current Home Sec in 2014 declaring "Rioters face years in prison as Home Secretary Yvette Cooper promises ‘swift justice’" [1]
[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8695988/London...
[1] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/riots-prison-justice-l...
It's all part of making effective protesting illegal. You can justify each little step as you clutch your pearls (even me, to an extent if I don't think of the bigger picture), but then when you realise that the sum of all that is permitted is standing alone creating no disturbance for anyone, effecting no change, and you realise effective protesting is banned.
I meant the way it deal with the southport rioters (no judgement value on the riot itself or its reasons, just noticing how the uk gov dealt with the it)
For example:
>Courts will sit for 24 hours to fast-track sentencing under government plans to crack down on far-Right riots that swept Britain on Saturday.[1]
[1]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/03/courts-open-24-h...
There is also this:
>Only Australia arrested climate and environmental protesters at a higher rate than UK police. One in five Australian eco-protests led to arrests, compared with about 17% in the UK. The global average rate is 6.7%.
>The UK’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2021 and the Public Order Act 2022 transformed the relationship between protesters and the state, handing police extensive new powers to curtail protests and criminalising a range of protest activities. [2]
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/11/britain-...
Boot, face, forever, etc