This Is The Sort Of 'Thought Policing' We Want!

Ademola Adedeji, 19, and three friends from Moston in north Manchester were each sentenced on Friday to eight years in prison for conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm.

They were jailed for taking part in a private group chat on the Telegram messaging app a few days after the murder of one of their friends.

Kids of Colour, a youth justice organisation which organised the march and the mentoring offer, said the case showed evidence of “thought policing”.

And for once, not the 'thought policing' we've become used to. This was actually the sort we want and need to see. Where they don't just think it, they actually commit to it in text messages!  

It said innocent young people had been criminalised for sending immature messages in the throes of grief, messages which were misinterpreted as proof of violent intent.

'They're good boys, they dint do nuffin'..!' 

Right, right. It's all a misinterpretation, then? They didn't have any intention of carrying ou...

Oh.

Most of the 10 young men attended the same school in Moston. They were convicted of plotting violent revenge for the killing of their friend — a 16-year-old aspiring rapper called Alexander John Soyoye, who performed drill music under the name “MD”.

None of those named as targets in the Telegram chat were hurt, though three of the defendants went on to violently attack two other boys using machetes and a car as a weapon.

Ooops! So much for that, then...! 

The public gallery was packed with their friends and family members who sobbed as sentences of eight years were handed down, with one boy’s father shouting: “Racists!”

It's a strange sort of 'racist' justice system that expends so much time and effort and public money to provide justice to the family of a murdered black boy, don't you think?

And no, for once, this isn't the joint enterprise that the usual suspects are so keen on aboilishing. It's an older bit of legislation: 

The case was tried under conspiracy legislation, which came into law long before the age of mobile phones and social media. It has similarities with crimes prosecuted as “joint enterprise”, a common law doctrine where an individual can be jointly convicted of the crime of another, if the court decides they foresaw that the other party was likely to commit that crime.

But the judge stressed: “The defendants were not in a joint enterprise; they were each principal parties playing a full role in committing the offence of a criminal conspiracy either to kill others or to intentionally cause them grievous bodily harm.”

And now they are quite rightly facing the consequences.