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Graffiti artist gets 18 months sentence

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treelover

Well-Known Member
Simon Sunderland of ---------- has received an 18 months jail term at Sheffield crown court. The 41 year old left his bloodaxe tag in areas around Chesterfield, Sheffield and Rotherham rail networks. The cost of repairing the damage is estimated to be in excess of £90,000.
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no link as yet.

A local graffiti artist has just received an 18 months sentence for 'vandalism'


This seems an incredibly long tariff for such an offence especially when the prisons are bursting at the seams as Grayling exerts his baleful influence on the courts. then, we have the contrast of Banksy as a national treasure and his work preserved by councils, but yes, I know its not tags.
 
It's not particularly surprising that committing 90 grand's worth of criminal damage gets you a prison sentence is it. This is the same system that can give you 6 months for nicking a bottle of water.
 
I know him. He's a dedicated chap. I can't say anything else about him as it would give the BTP graff squad more info than they need (yes, they will be reading this thread).

Similar sentences are regularly handed out and worse. When my own prosecution was still ongoing in the 90s a lad got 5 years for graffiti and to say it put the shits up us all was an understatement. I remember MPs got involved as the sentence was so OTT - the same week, the same court gave a bloke 3 years for killing someone through dangerous driving. But then we all know it often feels the law sees private property as worth more than human life.

Don't get me wrong, graffiti writers know the score but the sentences are way too high when most people, if asked, would probably recommend the perpetrators were made to clean it off.

What is also bad is that young kids are routinely locked up for a long time for this crime, kids who are usually not involved in any other criminal activity and are really just youngsters being youngsters.

The term 'tagging' is a lazy word used by the media to describe all types of graffiti. This is the kind of thing this story is about;

cw12.jpg


That someone is still writing at 41 isn't unusual, there are many older than that - some into their 60s in the USA. I'm 45 and haven't done anything for over a year but I still haven't stopped (just resting). It's such an enjoyable act and such a close-knit group that there isn't really any reason to give up unless you get bored or get tired of being sent to jail. Many older people who don't fancy the illegal side anymore do legal work only and some make their living at it.

Please note this is not Banksy shite. He's a cunt and all the graffiti writers hate him.
 
xenon said:
It's not particularly surprising that committing 90 grand's worth of criminal damage gets you a prison sentence is it. This is the same system that can give you 6 months for nicking a bottle of water.
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What "damage"? Seems to me the reasons they get rid of graffiti are aesthetic rather than structural (it doesn't fit in with rail company's precious corporate image, it makes racists/reactionary types feel "unsafe"). So I think it's disingenuous to call it "damage" when it seems to be closer to the rail network getting stiffed on the costs of maintaining their soulless Stepford Wives-esque facades.

Unless the contents of those spray cans are corrosive or something along those lines, I'm completely unsympathetic to the rail companies on this matter. Even then I'd want better solutions than banging up people for it.
 
JHE said:
Yes, the sentence is surprising.

It also surprises me that a 41-year-old goes 'tagging'.
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It does seem a surprising sentence, when he should just have been made to clean it all off (or pay the cost of the cleaning if done by others).
 
NoXion said:
What "damage"? Seems to me the reasons they get rid of graffiti are aesthetic rather than structural (it doesn't fit in with rail company's precious corporate image, it makes racists/reactionary types feel "unsafe"). So I think it's disingenuous to call it "damage" when it seems to be closer to the rail network getting stiffed on the costs of maintaining their soulless Stepford Wives-esque facades.

Unless the contents of those spray cans are corrosive or something along those lines, I'm completely unsympathetic to the rail companies on this matter. Even then I'd want better solutions than banging up people for it.
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But there is also the perception issue, that some claim that the public feel less safe in an area with lots of graffiti, so this has to be taken into account too. It's not just about rail companies to be fair.
 
NoXion said:
What "damage"? Seems to me the reasons they get rid of graffiti are aesthetic rather than structural (it doesn't fit in with rail company's precious corporate image, it makes racists/reactionary types feel "unsafe"). So I think it's disingenuous to call it "damage" when it seems to be closer to the rail network getting stiffed on the costs of maintaining their soulless Stepford Wives-esque facades.

Unless the contents of those spray cans are corrosive or something along those lines, I'm completely unsympathetic to the rail companies on this matter. Even then I'd want better solutions than banging up people for it.
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I was surprised at treelover's nyaevety. This guy's work might be brilliant or it might be just crap tagging, I don't know or care. It's not my opinion, criminal damage is what graffiti is classed as when procecutions are brought. I'm not endorsing the sentence. But in any case, artistic merit is unlikely to form part of the judge's thinking in sentencing.
 
farmerbarleymow said:
But there is also the perception issue, that some claim that the public feel less safe in an area with lots of graffiti, so this has to be taken into account too. It's not just about rail companies to be fair.
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True. Most peple don't want shit gang tags and alike all over their neighbourhood. But that's not the reason why the likes of this Simon fella get procecuted.
 
xenon said:
I was surprised at treelover's nyaevety. This guy's work might be brilliant or it might be just crap tagging, I don't know or care. It's not my opinion, criminal damage is what graffiti is classed as when procecutions are brought. I'm not endorsing the sentence. But in any case, artistic merit is unlikely to form part of the judge's thinking in sentencing.
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Artistic merits aside, my other point was that the "criminal damage" seems to be that the rail company got ripped off by whichever outfit they outsourced the job to. Or one could take the view that this graffiti artist's work put money in the pocket of whoever was paid to remove it, in which case why is this man being jailed for providing employment at a time when it's harder to come by? :D

farmerbarleymow said:
But there is also the perception issue, that some claim that the public feel less safe in an area with lots of graffiti, so this has to be taken into account too. It's not just about rail companies to be fair.
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Aren't such perceptions subjective? I certainly don't feel unsafe around graffiti. Why should I? It's not like it's going to reach out and assault me or steal my wallet, or induce others to do so like some kind of funky-coloured mind-control device written in spraypaint. On the other hand, things like poor lighting would seem to present a demonstrable risk to safety by directly producing an environment more amenable to such criminal acts.
 
xenon said:
Ah, the Broken Window fallacy. :)
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Looking it up as the term is unfamiliar to me, it seems to be more a parable than a fallacy; a just-so story rather than an explicit calculation of the costs and benefits involved. I see no reason to assume that they'd be exactly the same in all circumstances.
 
NoXion said:
<snip>

Aren't such perceptions subjective? I certainly don't feel unsafe around graffiti. Why should I? It's not like it's going to reach out and assault me or steal my wallet, or induce others to do so like some kind of funky-coloured mind-control device written in spraypaint. On the other hand, things like poor lighting would seem to present a demonstrable risk to safety by directly producing an environment more amenable to such criminal acts.
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Such perceptions are inevitably subjective, but they are real enough so can't be discounted in the debate about graffiti. The whole community needs to live together, so one group doesn't have an untrammelled right to go around spray-painting whatever they live regardless of the impact on others.

I agree that poor lighting also has a bearing on safety, perceived and real. Lots of things do of course. But back to the point about perceptions of safety re graffiti, I read an interesting piece somewhere about how people behave when are area has an untidy feel to it. The study was about litter, and how they observed people littering more when there was already litter about, compared to when an area was tidy. So human behaviour plays a big part in how people react to things like this, so is an important element in the debate. :)
 
I think I should also say that graffiti writing as we are discussing here does include the stuff people often think of when the 'broken window' arguments start. It's not all wonderful colour pieces and cartoon characters. We do and love this stuff but it still has to be well done. We know what is good and what isn't and we like it. It's a selfish thing but that's how it is. We like it, we do it for us and we don't really care if others don't like it.

A decent tag or handstyle as they call it these days...

Faust5_Graffiti-TAG.jpg


throw ups

images


images
 
by the way, when he got done, I think the judge said the reason for the sentence was the money and for causing people annoyance. jail for annoyance? for fuck's sake!

By the way, this thing about money, when I got done as part of a group, the total bill was over half a million quid. This should be seen as fraud because many years later most of the graffiti in that bill had not been cleaned....
 
ska invita said:
why do you think its a fallacy? based on my own psychology I think its a thing
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What the economics 101 thing? Would you rather spend your money on fixing a window that's repeatedly broken or do something more useful / fun with it. Alright, I'm not saying that the train company would necessarily spend the money used on painting over graffiti, in investing in equipment or raising staff wages either. Maybe it would be used in raising executive pay or going to the shareholders. That's going a bit outside the scope of the objections to the Broken Window thing though...
 
NoXion said:
Looking it up as the term is unfamiliar to me, it seems to be more a parable than a fallacy; a just-so story rather than an explicit calculation of the costs and benefits involved. I see no reason to assume that they'd be exactly the same in all circumstances.
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Google James Q Wilson and Broken Windows, and you should get Wilson's original paper. It's interesting, although IMO he takes a lot for granted.
 
ska invita said:
why do you think its a fallacy? based on my own psychology I think its a thing
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It is a "thing", however, it's a factor in degrading what we might term "community safety" (i.e. the physical delapidation of environment promoting crime and anti-social behaviour), rather than a direct cause of a lack of community safety, as is often claimed.
 
ViolentPanda said:
It is a "thing", however, it's a factor in degrading what we might term "community safety" (i.e. the physical delapidation of environment

Ah right.

Yeah he probably meant that re broken windows. In that case, I agree ska invita.

A dellapodated, dark and seemingly abandoned urban environment, which may or may not also include graffiti, can certainly create an intimidating atmosphere.
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