Southport killer Axel Rudakubana will serve a minimum of 52 years in prison for the horrific murder of three young girls. But despite the lengthy sentence handed to the teenager at Liverpool Crown Court today, it’s hard to say that justice has been served. Rudakubana should die behind bars, yet the law prevented the judge, Mr Justice Goose, from handing Rudakubana a whole-life sentence. It is possible that Rudakabana will be a free man at the age of 70. This is abhorrent.
To see why the possibility that Rudakubana may ever be released is such a grave injustice, it’s worth revisiting the horrific details of the case.
It is possible that Rudakabana will be a free man at the age of 70. This is abhorrent
Rudakubana planned his murders. He entered a holiday club last July where 26 happy young girls were making friendship bracelets and dancing to Taylor Swift. Without saying a word, he grabbed the child nearest to him. He moved quickly through the room, killing innocent, defenceless children.
Rudakubana killed three girls and stabbed another ten people. Alice, one of his victims, was nine. She was taken to hospital, but her injuries were so severe she died the following morning. Her parents said: “Alice was always very kind…she was a beautiful girl. She was a strong and confident preteen with a world of dreams.”
Bebe, another victim, was six. She was found on the landing outside the studio door. She had ‘defensive injuries’ and had suffered at least 122 sharp force injuries. Elsie, the final girl killed by Rudakubana, was seven. Her 85 sharp force injuries were so severe that she could not have been saved. Their injuries were described in court as ‘sadistic’. One girl who survived had 32 stab wounds. While under arrest at the police station, Rudakubana said: ‘It’s a good thing those children are dead…I’m so glad…so happy’ and: ‘Literally, such a good thing those kids are dead, six years old… So happy, six years old. It’s a good thing they are dead, yeah’.
The most severe punishment available for murderers under English law is a ‘whole-life order’. Under this sentence, no hope of release exists. This is reserved for the most sadistic and horrific crimes. Wayne Couzens, the police officer who murdered Sarah Everard, received a whole-life order. But Rudakubana could not be given this sentence because the law states that murderers aged under 18 when they kill, cannot be sentenced to a whole-life order. The law is wrong. Rudakubana killed three girls, and tried to kill another eight, as well as two adults, just nine days before his eighteenth birthday. As Leanne Lucas, the dance instructor who survived, said: “He targeted us because we were women and girls, vulnerable and easy prey”.
Our justice system should seek to redeem and rehabilitate where possible. I have often argued that we could do this far better. I even think that some convicted murderers can be rehabilitated. There are different kinds of killing, though. Young men who kill another young man in a dispute over status, or drugs, or money, are qualitatively different to monsters like Rudakubana who plan the slaughter of innocent children and then celebrate it afterwards.
In 2022, the law was changed to allow those aged between 18 and 21 to receive whole-life orders. This was because Hashem Abedi, the brother of the Manchester Arena bomber, was not eligible for such a sentence when he was found guilty of 22 counts of murder. Rudakubana shows us that the law needs to be changed again. If someone is capable of planning, and executing, such a horrific crime, then the idea that their age should be a mitigation is nonsense. The least this murderer should receive is the certainty he will die in prison.
A great many people believe even this would not go far enough and that Rudakubana deserves death. Many of the common objections to execution fall away in a case like this. There is absolutely no doubt as to his guilt. His crimes were premeditated, monstrous and sadistic. There is no prospect of his rehabilitation.
The government might wish us to focus on where Rudakubana bought the knife he used (despite him having two other blades in his home), the online materials he watched, or on the need for the community to ‘come together’. This won’t do.
Rudakubana is far from the only such monster living among us. Our nation has become increasingly unsafe. Just this week, four people were stabbed at a London supermarket, a woman was murdered with a knife in Plymouth (where the suspect is a ‘male’ who is ‘known to the police’) and a 12-year-old boy was killed in Birmingham. It was not always like this. Just a couple of decades ago, any one of these stories would have been so shocking that it would dominate the news for weeks. Now it is our new normal. It doesn’t have to be like this.
The first duty of a state is to keep its citizens safe. Our social contract, the entire legitimacy of the British state, rests on that. But Britons don’t feel safe.YouGov polling this week showed that 61 per cent of people are not confident in the state’s ability to even ‘reduce the risk’ of another attack like Southport. They’re right to be fearful. It’s clear that we have no idea how to handle and constrain violent men like Rudakubana. The state knew about his violent, escalating and dangerous behaviour for five years before he committed these murders. He should never have been free to kill.
The government must face reality. The problem is not Amazon, or social media. Our country has become unsafe because we have a high number of violent, dangerous young men who are left free to attack and kill. They seem to particularly target women and girls. To confront this, we must openly and honestly examine the backgrounds, origins and natures of these violent men, and begin to take the hard choices to make our nation safe again.
Katy Balls, Isabel Hardman and James Heale discuss the political reaction to the Southport sentencing on the latest Coffee House Shots podcast:
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