Should we send people to prison for racist footy chanting?

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Now, this behaviour is disgraceful. No argument with me on this. In any civilised society, these appalling a***holes would be socially shunned for a very long time. By which I mean that shopkeepers should can refuse service, friends can (and probably should) abandon them, pubs should bar them and so on.

However, I can't help but think that a prison sentence for what is in the end verbal abuse is not the right solution either. In fact, it seems distinctly unjust.

This kind of behaviour is best dealt with socially rather than in a legal setting.

I would suggest such over-reacting causes more bad feeling and racism than it prevents.

Tequila, my position is that using racial epithets is equivalent to using foul or obscene words, and nobody has been able to demonstrate why the use of racial epithets are somehow worse. So, assuming nobody can prove me wrong now, I think it is lunacy on stilts to imprison people for bad manners. If such were done consistently, there wouldn't be anybody left to guard the jails.

When the guards start getting jail time too then i would see the justice ..
The gross social separation is pure tyranny..
Racial conflicts are growing and growing as our economy weakens ..
Unless we are going to just keep certain people in jails forever
i dont see how it solves the core problem..

PS I do miss posting here..
This site has almost 45 spy ware programs running so i have stayed away..

Language can be used to insight violence and it sounds as though this was their intent. I think they should be punished. If no violence actually took place then jail seems a bit harsh, but at the same time such outbursts shouldn't be accepted.

I'm not convinced that the guards are the problem. The problem, as Proudhon quipped, is that jails are repositories where big crooks lock away little ones.

While I abhor social engineering of any form, the social separation is causing massive problems. What is happening is that increasingly, the affluent elites and everybody else live in parallel universes--as two separate nations. This is true all over the West.

Racial conflicts will be severely exacerbated as liberal economies continue to impoverish ever-increasing numbers of their citizens. I am referring to what Marx termed immiseration, and the liberals are doing their best to prove him right. Racial conflicts will be exacerbated in particular because diversity is a weakness rather than a strength.

As far as keeping people in prison forever goes, this is why I favor capital punishment. Those who have dedicated their lives to preying upon and cheating others have no right to exist among us.

Ann, civilized society is totally incompatible with reacting to boorish behavior with violence. Those who do so must be held accountable for their actions. Words are one thing; violence is another.

I miss the old day when a few fist fights were the norm at ball games ..
but today there is just too much deep hatred ..
America needs to grow and bare another revolution before unity evolves again..
Jail just prolongs the conflict and grows the anger..
but sure does feed the prison system ..
As a Libertarian i honor individuality.. and so does our Constitution..
Too bad so many Americans have not a clue..
I am sure the English would love to find our weakness and take a shot..
But then so would Russia and China..
Problem is simply that our gov is grossly over size..period..

Completely agree with OP.

Agree with consensus they should be held accountable by all means accept legal. If you start jailing people because they might cause violence you start a slippery slope. Do you jail people who have a meltdown or do the aspie stare because most people are probably scared of those?

Hmmm. This is a knotty one. I tend to be in favour of freedom of expression, even for antisocial views, but it would appear (although the linked article is undescriptive) that what these people did went far beyond simply expression and into the realms of threatening behaviour towards other passengers. So in that sense, in as much as sentencing guidelines currently stand, their treatment was just. But I think that a 'community service' order, specifically tailored to provide social readjustment (perhaps by working for a black community organisation, with strict standards of behaviour imposed) might be more useful in terms of providing for the rehabilitative aspects of the justice system. Then again, such a penalty might entrench some of their racist views. It's difficult to predict how they might respond.

It seems they were jailed for what amounts to bullying, threatening and intimidation, rather than for the specific speech involved.

If that's the case, then it seems justified. They weren't jailed for the beliefs behind their words, but for aggressive behavior that was abusive to other passengers.

"Feeling" intimidated is pretty objective. Some people can feel intimidated by even the smallest things that any reasonable person would consider innocuous. I think intimidation has to involve a threat of some kind; nasty names don't count.

For example, a woman was just hauled out of the library I run in handcuffs by the police a few minutes ago. She was throwing things at one of our male patrons and threatening to kill him until I intervened. That is intimidation; name-calling is something else, no matter how distasteful it may be.

While I don't disagree with the general tenor of what you are saying, it's plain that in the case under discussion, six beered-up football fans sang offensive songs and behaved in racially and sexually threatening manners on public transport. That goes somewhat beyond being a matter of interpretation and nuance. And of course, the fact that the threat could (stress: Could) reside purely in someone's perception of events doesn't prevent it from being any less real. We all have a responsibility not only to not behave in certain ways, but to be sure (within reason) that our behaviour cannot be misperceived in certain ways. And by the sound of it, the six guilty men either didn't give a damn how they were perceived, or actively encouraged that perception.

Exactly how did they behave in a "racially and sexually threatening manner"?