Legal Recommendations

Check also

Legal Stuff Bust Card Scottish_Guide

This is an excerpt from a recent message by our twin team. It contains recommendations based on currently in-force laws in England and Sheffield, related to the specific use of mobiles and text messages. On the other legal pages you will find: Scottish guide to lae (2005) Bust card (2004) Recommendations by Activist Trauma (2005)


 * On text messages and Incitement*

a text message "about actions" (if I may put it that way you will know what I mean)could be construed in England as incitement a criminal offence. I am sure someone will be able to check the Scots legal position. The English law position on incitement is:

It is an indictable offence at common law for a person to incite or solicit another to commit an offence, even though no such offence is either committed or attempted. The penalty for incitement is imprisonment or a fine or both at the discretion of the court.

For an incitement to be complete there must be some form of actual communication with a person whom it is intended to incite (eg a text message); where, however, a communication is sent with a view to incite, but does not reach the intended recipient, the sender may still be guilty of an attempt to incite (where a message has been sent but not picked up on the intended recipient(s) phone). Incitement is complete even if the mind of the person incited is unaffected (and, interestingly, notwithstanding that the person incited intends to inform on the inciter!) But there can be no incitement unless one person seeks to persuade or encourage another. Note that the persuasion need not be directed to a particular person: see R v Most (newspaper article); Invicta Plastics Ltd v Clare (advertisement in motoring journal). These cases would in my view be likely to cover the circumstances of sending a mass text message.

In order to prove incitement it is necessary to show that the accused person sought to persuade or encourage another to commit an act that would constitute a crime if done by that other; but it is no defence that, at the time of the incitement, the offence incited could not have been committed or that it could not thereafter be committed owing to physical impossibility or police action (e.g. arguing a action could not occur due to police presence would not be a defence). If the person who incites believes that the crime can be accomplished by the means suggested, he commits an offence although the crime incited cannot be accomplished by those means; but there is no offence of incitement where he does not believe that the crime can be thus accomplished even if the person incited believes that it can.

(...) From G8 arrest support team (later to grow into G8 prisoners' support team)

Scottish_Guide