Report: UK courts to give harsher riot sentences

LONDON?? British law enforcement officials have been advised to ignore regular sentencing guidelines and mete out harsher punishments when dealing with those found guilty of rioting last week.

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The stepped-up guidelines issued by the country's prosecution service explain why some of those found to have been involved in the outbursts that swept Britain have received more punitive sentences than normal, The Guardian reported on Tuesday.

For example, one mother-of-two was sent to jail for five months after being caught with a pair of shorts that had been stolen earlier, the newspaper reported. A 23-year-old was imprisoned for six months after stealing water worth $5.70 from a supermarket.

The new guidance for Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service emerged after an official in south London said her court had been given guidelines that those involved in rioting should be sent to prison, the newspaper reported.

The police and judicial system have come under intense pressure to deal harshly with those found to have been involved in the violence.

Story: UK's Cameron could gain from tough riot response

Nevertheless, the courts and tribunals service denied that there had been any political meddling in the country's courts.

"Sentencing is a matter for the independent judiciary," a spokeswoman told msnbc.com. "Magistrates in London are being advised by their legal advisers to consider whether their powers of punishment are sufficient in dealing with some cases arising from the recent disorder."

Five people died during the violence that ravaged English cities last week, including three men hit by a car in Birmingham as they protected local shops from looters. Two men and a teenage boy have been charged with murdering Haroon Jahan, 20, and brothers Shazad Ali, 30, and Abdul Musavir, 31.

London cleans up and assesses the damage

Several suspects have been questioned about the death of a man who was shot in the head during rioting in south London.

Across the country, some 3,000 people have been arrested and about 1,400 of those charged with riot-related offenses.

Courts opened around-the-clock for several days to deal with the flood of suspects.

Water fight crackdown
Police also seemed to be heeding calls for harsher measures to crack down on violence that often spread via social networking when authorities announced on Twitter that they were charging a man for organizing a water fight on his BlackBerry.

Residents of Essex, outside of London, were informed that police were "working to keep the county safe" when they said the 20-year-old man "who allegedly sent messages from a BlackBerry encouraging people to join in a water fight has been charged with encouraging or assisting in the commission of an indictable offence under the Serious Crime Act 2007."

Video: Rebuilding lives in the aftermath of UK riots (on this page)

Police have been criticized for responding to the riots too slowly, particularly in London. Eventually they deployed huge numbers of officers to quell the mayhem.

Prime Minister David Cameron, meanwhile, has said that the government will crack down on people using sites like Facebook and Twitter to further violence.

"When people are using social media for violence we need to stop them," he said in a speech to Parliament in the wake of the violence.

Video: ?Moral collapse? triggered riots (on this page)

Police said they would keep up an expanded presence on the streets of London over the coming days, although the force didn't give a detailed breakdown. Scotland Yard said many of the additional officers would be assigned to hunt those involved in the riots.

Many senior police officers feel stung by government criticism of their handling of the riots, and oppose plans to slash police budgets as part of sweeping austerity measures.

Britain's public service broadcaster the BBC also felt the sting of criticism after a prominent historian and commentator said during a discussion of the riots that "whites have become black."

theGrio: Controversial claim: UK rioters are 'black wannabes'

The BBC received nearly 700 complaints after David Starkey's comments and online campaign organization gopetition.com attracted thousands of signatures demanding that the historian and the BBC apologize.

Starkey also said that "... this Jamaican patois that's been intruded in England, and this is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country."

On Monday, Cameron pledged to deliver a raft of new policies aimed at reversing the "slow-motion moral collapse" which he blamed for fostering the disorder.

Cameron insisted that racial tensions, poverty and the government's austerity measures ? much of which have yet to bite ? were not the primary causes of the riots across London and other major cities.

Is culture of mutual respect what UK needs?

Instead, Cameron pointed to gang-related crime, and a widespread failure from Britain's leaders to address deep-rooted social issues, including the country's generous welfare system.

Cameron pledged to end a culture of timidity in discussing family breakdown or poor parenting, or in criticizing those who fail to set a good example to their children or community.

"We have been too unwilling for too long to talk about what is right and what is wrong," Cameron said. "We have too often avoided saying what needs to be said, about everything from marriage to welfare to common courtesy."

The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44156358/ns/world_news-europe/

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