UK creating 'new breed of political prisoners' with rising anti-protest sentences, report says

A report by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and the protest group Defend Our Juries concludes that England and Wales are creating a “new breed of political prisoners” through the systematic incarceration of climate and Palestine-solidarity activists, with custodial sentences for civil disobedience becoming more frequent and longer.

The research, to be launched on Tuesday, identifies 286 cases in which activists were jailed for protest-related offences, receiving a total of 136 years in prison. The average detention period, based on 256 cases for which data was available, was 28 weeks. One in three protesters was jailed for six months or more, and one in five for more than a year.

David Whyte, the report’s co-author and professor of climate justice at QMUL, said: “These are exceptional sentences that are being used to apply to protests which are themselves profoundly political. So it’s clear that extreme sentences and the level of remand detentions [before trial] at an extreme level are being used to respond to one category of prisoners and that’s prisoners who’ve been detained because they’ve been involved in civil disobedience, direct action as a result of political protest. So there is something going on which is profoundly political. Very often those protesters are reflecting majority rather than a minority view.”

The report cites anti-protest legislation, police powers, civil injunctions obtained by corporations and public bodies, and judges removing legal defences as drivers of the trend. It describes remand as “the first line of attack”, noting that in 60% of cases final sentences were more lenient than time already spent in custody awaiting trial.

Contempt of court accounted for 40% of imprisonment cases, the report found. Of those, 8% arose from courtroom conduct or breach of a judge’s order, while 32% involved breach of a civil injunction obtained by a private company or public authority. Whyte said: “The real danger is that you criminalise people for breaching something which is essentially a civil injunction. So that doesn’t start as a criminal offence but it ends up with a criminal penalty and that’s very concerning because it means that private companies, effectively, are imposing injunctions which lead to large numbers of people going to jail.”

The report highlights that 69 people were imprisoned, some for holding placards, after Warwickshire borough council obtained a high court injunction in 2022 against Just Stop Oil’s direct action campaign at the Kingsbury oil terminal.

It also details the case of the “Filton 24”, charged with offences connected to a Palestine Action protest at a factory near Bristol run by Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems. The accused spent up to 18 months in jail – the standard pre-trial limit is six months – before all but one were bailed after the first six defendants were cleared of aggravated burglary. Two of those six were subsequently acquitted of criminal damage. Eighteen more defendants due to stand trial over the events at Filton still face other charges.

A judicial spokesperson said: “Judicial independence and impartiality are fundamental to the rule of law. Upon taking office, judges take the judicial oath where they swear to act ‘without fear or favour, affection or ill will’. In each case, judges make decisions based on the evidence and arguments presented to them and apply the law as it stands. Judges and magistrates sentence according to the law set by parliament and the sentencing guidelines set by the independent Sentencing Council, as well as the facts of each case which may have aggravating or mitigating factors.”