Nine days from his 18th birthday, Axel Rudakubana took to a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport, murdering three young girls and attacking eight others. The attack triggered rioting across the UK and was the largest incident of social unrest since 2011. Because he is under eighteen, Rudakubana is protected under UN legislation from a life sentence in prison; on 23 January, he was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years. Southport Labour MP Patrick Hurley protested that the sentence was not severe enough, expressing fears that the traumatised survivors of the dance class, with their childhoods marred, will likely be re-traumatised in their mid-50s when the felon begins to apply for parole.
Although unlikely that Rudakubana will be released after his minimum sentence – with rumours that he has already faced inmate attacks – his case has raised questions in and outside of Parliament regarding juvenile punishment.
Should mere days separating Rudakubana’s “adolescence” and “adulthood” grant him a lifeline of hope embodied in decades of potential freedom near the end of his life? Decades that his victims will never see? For me, the obvious answer is a definite no. Whilst I won’t go as far as Reform MP Robert Lowe in calling for the return of capital punishment for such cases, the meticulously calculated violence and trauma purposefully inflicted on a group of children should always place an individual behind bars forever. The ages of 16 to 18 are ambiguous in terms of mental development and capacity to harm, meaning cases such as these – violence to such an abhorrent degree – that are conducted in this time frame should ideally be handled and scrutinised independently, with the ability, where necessary, to surpass the legality of “adulthood” toward real justice.
However, discourse surrounding such legislation implies that atrocious acts of violence such as the July attacks have already occurred, and therefore, the system has already failed. Our focus should be on the surge in violence that we see in young people and the ways in which this can be prevented. Ironically, Prevent – the government guideline in place to tackle terrorist ideology – is purposed to intervene early before individuals are radicalised. Rudakubana was pulled up by Prevent early on due to obsessions with figures such as Hitler and Khan, and again when he called Childline asking “what to do if [he] wanted to kill someone.” These prevention precautions failed to do exactly what they set out to do, illustrating a grave underestimation of children’s capacity to harm.
Again, the problem runs deeper. Rudakuban’s attack spurred nationwide violence fuelled by propaganda that had little to do with the case and lots do with a taste for thuggery. Whilst the catalysts for both are complicated, there is an obvious correlation between acts of violence and access to violent media, of which Rudakubana had consumed far too much. He is not alone in this. Blindly relying on the goodwill of tech giants to effectively protect vulnerable individuals from hateful content represents a utopia that we simply don’t have time to watch fail. Policing the media platforms themselves feels like a step towards totalitarianism and a recipe for uproar. The solution is unclear, the problem critical.
Whilst we wait for appropriate steps to be made in the world of Prevent and persecution, I’ll finish with this. The power of violent media on young minds is, frankly, immeasurable. Households, parents, and carers should take all possible steps to restrict young people from accessing this content. Raising children in the age of social media is a new phenomenon in which we all are learning, and its dangers and respective precautions must never be forgotten.
“Southport” by mrrobertwade (wadey) is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.