{"id":77515,"date":"2025-07-20T08:08:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T08:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/77515\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T08:08:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T08:08:18","slug":"new-criminal-offence-to-target-violence-obsessed-suspects-before-they-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/77515\/","title":{"rendered":"New criminal offence to target violence-obsessed suspects before they attack"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GettyGetty Images<\/p>\n

A powerful new criminal offence to target suspects who are found to be preparing mass killings will ensure their plotting is taken as seriously as terrorism, the home secretary says.<\/p>\n

Yvette Cooper said the criminal justice system had to be given new tools to respond to violence-fixated individuals who are not motivated by a particular ideology, in the wake of the Southport attack last year.<\/p>\n

Terror suspects who take steps towards an attack can be jailed for life, even if their plans are not fully formed.<\/p>\n

Cooper told the BBC that the government will “close the gap” between such offenders and lone, violence-obsessed individuals by giving police the power to apprehend them long before they can act.<\/p>\n

Axel Rudakubana is serving a life sentence for murdering three girls when he attacked a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport almost a year ago.<\/p>\n

Eight others girls were seriously injured, along with two adults who tried to stop the killer.<\/p>\n

Had police found he had been researching a target prior to the attack, they could not have arrested and charged him with a serious offence because he had no ideological motive linked to the definition of terrorism.<\/p>\n

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s State of Terror<\/a> series, which charts the response to violent extremism over the 20 years since the 7\/7 bombings, Cooper said the police will get the power to prevent such individuals who do not have a clear ideology, in the same way they can with terror suspects.<\/p>\n

\"ReutersReuters<\/p>\n

Yvette Cooper said the government would “tighten” the law so planning a mass attack be “taken as seriously as terrorism”<\/p>\n

“There is a gap in the law around the planning of mass attacks that can be just as serious [as terrorism] in their implications for communities, their impact, the devastation that they can cause and the seriousness of the crime,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We will tighten legislation so that that is taken as seriously as terrorism.”<\/p>\n

Cooper said the plan – which was briefly announced in March but not fleshed out until now – was for the new law to be similar to the exceptionally serious crime of preparing for acts of terrorism.<\/p>\n

This legislation, brought in after the 2005 London bombings, is a vital counter-extremism tool that has jailed dozens of suspects.<\/p>\n

It allows the police to arrest a terror suspect for the steps they take to prepare for an attack – such as researching a target.<\/p>\n

But it stipulates that there must also be evidence the preparation is linked to an ideological cause, such as support of a group banned under terrorism laws.<\/p>\n

\"YoutubeYoutube<\/p>\n

Nicholas Prosper was jailed for murdering his family – but was also researching a school attack<\/p>\n

The planned non-terror offence would apply to a far wider range of scenarios, including the activity of individuals like Nicholas Prosper. He had been planning a mass school shooting before he was apprehended for murdering his family.<\/p>\n

Cooper said: “We’ve seen cases of growing numbers of teenagers potentially radicalising themselves online and seeing all kinds of extremist material online in their bedrooms.<\/p>\n

“They’re seeing a really distorted and warped online world.<\/p>\n

“We have to make sure that that the systems can respond while not taking our eye off the ball of the more long-standing ideological threats.”<\/p>\n

State of Terror continues on Monday on <\/b>BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds<\/b><\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty Images A powerful new criminal offence to target suspects who are found to be preparing mass killings…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":77516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,50,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-77515","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114884542835275496","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}