tbtommyb
Well-Known Member
ta. I have read a few times that he's not popular but not sure why.
Graffiti artist gets 18 months sentence
- Thread starter treelover
- Start date
stethoscope
Well-Known Member
There's a nice 'Bloodaxe' somewhere between Doncaster and Sheffield but the train is always travelling too fast for me to get a picture of it - always thought it brightened up an otherwise dull and cold concrete flyover. Excessive sentence IMO.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
likesfish
You can't park here sir
Blokes an anti social git with mental problems
how would you like BLOODAXE painted over some of your stuff
Some graffiti can be funny or artistic tagging is always just crap
Bloke should have to remove every last fucking tag and be you tubed while doing it cretin.
how would you like BLOODAXE painted over some of your stuff
Some graffiti can be funny or artistic tagging is always just crap
Bloke should have to remove every last fucking tag and be you tubed while doing it cretin.
JHE
.
Yup,according to the Beeb...
which reads as if Adams was suggesting that Sunderland's mental illness was precipitated by by his imprisonment, which I'd guess is possible.
The Beeb article is accompanied by an example of Sunderland's naff art.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-28884392
(Martin Smith, the notorious ex-Social Worker and alleged sex offender, is really into this graffiti rubbish.)
farmerbarleymow
I'm Petee's spirit animal
bmd
Island in the stream.
Its in the eye of the beholder, surely?
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
moodygirl86
Active Member
This is just another example of the authorities picking on easy targets, especially when people get less for assault. I'm more annoyed by that than I am by looking at graffiti tags - which is just an art form, even if it's a slightly more antisocial version.
comrade spurski
Well-Known Member
18 months? They jail him, costing the authorities approx 90k cos he caused damage worth 90k...ffs...pay 3 people 30k each to clean up his mess and tag him...3 people get a good wage...graffitti is cleaned up and he gets told off...and no one gets their life fucked up for painting stuff...shit stuff or not
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...
throw ups
What I find odd is nowadays you can buy pens/paint etc that's supposedly designed for graffiti, whereas in the 80's that wasn't the case - But nowadays you seldom see a decent handstyle whereas in the 80's they were the norm. If anything I'd rather see a well executed marker tag than a full colour piece - What looks better than posca on glass? Or edding 850 on glass come to that?
Anyway, no way should anyone get time for writing on something.
farmerbarleymow
I'm Petee's spirit animal
It depends on where the person is writing on walls or whatever, and the volume of it. If it is on derelict buildings and the like then fair enough, I agree with you, because the graffiti there doesn't really matter. But if they are peppering their writing all over the place, then I don't agree. No one has the right to behave as they please, and this applies to everyone, graffiti writers included.
So if someone decides to daub graffiti all over the place then I have no sympathy for whatever punishment they receive - simply because their behaviour is manifestly unreasonable and selfish. Childish even - 'I want to write my name wherever I want, and I don't care how it affects other people in the community' - that is the attitude that comes across when you hear about prolific graffiti writers, and see the tags everywhere.
I do agree that the sentences handed down may be unreasonable in some cases, and alternative sentences should be considered more, such as community service and making them scrub off graffiti.
You're right about that bit - It is selfish behaviour putting your wish to scribble on things above how it affects anyone else. But I still don't think anyone should get time for doing graffiti - It's a nuisance and an eyesore but it doesn't really harm anyone. AFAIC prison should be reserved for those who cause other people actual harm. There's a difference between being a criminal and being anti social and, much as anti social people can be a pain, we're not America and we shouldn't be sending people down just for being pests. Like you say, make them wash it off.
Wolfie Smith
Sociable Worker
Tagging, oh pardon me, 'Handstyle' is supremely arrogant, self-indulgent twattery that makes the place look shit. Don't know if 18 months is long enough to be a deterrent for graffitists, but at least whilst inside they ain't fucking up the place for everyone else.
farmerbarleymow
I'm Petee's spirit animal
I agree that incarceration should be reserved, in most cases*, for people who harm people and people who pose a risk to others. But people do get sent to prison when they repeatedly commit what in isolation are minor offences like graffiti, and that can be the only option sometimes. Basically, if someone commits graffiti the first consideration should be a community sentence, and only if they repeatedly commit the same offence should prison be considered.
The same reasoning applies to quite a lot of minor offences - shoplifting is one, where people get sent down because they have a very lengthy record of convictions for the same offence. There is only so much that can be tolerated, and if people won't or can't learn the lesson then prison it is.
That said, there has to be proper consideration of any underlying causes to the behaviour, such as mental illness, although in this particular case in Sheffield it was just the defence claiming that was a factor, and it wasn't clear from the article whether a psych report was commissioned by the defence or prosecution on the subject.
* other offences which do not harm people can warrant prison of course, such as major fraud, perjury, etc.
And do you support imprisoning other non violent offenders on the same grounds? At least shoplifters aren't shoplifting while they're inside. At least TV licence dodgers aren't watching telly while they're inside - Oh wait a minute, they are - Either that or playing on their playstations anyway. Prison - It works, eh Wolfie? Throw the key away. The bastards.
TBH I can see how graffiti can get on peoples nerves, but really that's all it is - An irritant. Not worth locking someone up over. And I do find it a bit odd that out of all possible types of offence it's graffiti that seems to bring out the reactionary "throw the key away" type mentality in so many people.
I'd say fraud/perjury etc do harm people - Just not physically, so I've got no problem with seeing people do time for things like that.
I've not really got any argument with the rest of your post though. WRT shoplifting, that's often down to drug issues and if people aren't getting the help then they are going to keep offending. But I doubt that's an issue that'll be addressed properly any time soon, so like you say, prison it is.
And WRT graffiti - The people who do it get a buzz from it being illegal, so they don't really have that much grounds to start crying when they get caught. Still though, I'm not altogether comfortable with the idea of people being locked up for it - It seems a bit OTT to me.
farmerbarleymow
I'm Petee's spirit animal
I agree that shoplifting is a problem issue with respect to the underlying causes. The same can be said for a lot of offending to be fair - the data available suggests that the prison population has a disturbing rate of things like illiteracy and poor educational attainment, bad parenting, mental health problems and substance abuse issues. It seems like we, as society, just expensively warehouse our problems without tackling them at source - so the cycle continues generation after generation. But still, some people regardless of the above are just dangerous and need to be locked up for everyone else's safety.
Undoubtedly. I wouldn't put graffiti writers (even repeat prolific offenders) in that bracket though.
farmerbarleymow
I'm Petee's spirit animal
Absolutely - graffiti writers aren't dangerous if they are just daubing their scribbles wherever. But if they have other behaviours that go along with doing what they do, they could be classed as violent and therefore be more deserving of a custodial sentence. It all depends on the context, and while the act of daubing graffiti isn't dangerous in itself, the individual doing it could be.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
He does it for the benefit of an audience, in recognition of the fact that public space is public. Whatever you think of his actual work, I'd rather people did that than, 'we do it for ourselves and we don't really care if other people don't like it'.
I like the idea of graffiti as a response to an environment created by other people but that we're obliged to live in. Many a blank, joyless warehouse or depot has been greatly improved by the addition of graffiti. But if you take a crappy building that someone put up without any thought for the impact it would have on the space around it, and you spray something onto that without caring about the impact of what you're doing then you and the person who built the thing in the first place aren't really so different.
So logically we should only send graffiti artists to jail if we're also willing to jail the developers who build horrible things all over our towns and cities for a lot longer in recognition of the far greater psychic impact of their misdeeds.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
That graffiti is really shit, and for that alone he should go to prison.
The guy's mentally ill. Even if you think bad artwork is justification for sending someone to prison (in which case see you in twenty years Damien Hirst) there's no way it can be right to send a paranoid schizophrenic to prison for anything.
krink
I'll do it this afternoon
I think the main reason for the rise of ugly graff is this ease of access. Any kid can get his parents to buy him specially formulated pens and high quality paint very easily and very cheaply. There's no racking for these kids as you can go to your local graff shop with 30 quid and you're in. This is the people who destroy the streets with shitty tags instead of getting their arses on the lines. *reminiscence mode* in my day it was so secretive. You had to learn the ropes, earn your place. Getting paint was fucking hard work in the UK and with no internet you had to get 'fame' by hard work.... nowadays it's all multi-bags of fat caps and 600ml cans of chrome....
Doctor Carrot
Marxist Henchman
I'm always suspicious of the bills involved in the clean up of these things. I mean how much can it cost to pay someone with a jetwash and lick of paint for a couple of hours? Get someone on community service to do it and you get free labour. £90k my arse!
farmerbarleymow
I'm Petee's spirit animal
Clearly my humour went straight over your head.
But on the mental illness issue, that isn't as clear cut as you make out, as least as far as we can make out through the media coverage.
Yes, he was apparently admitted to a mental health unit in 2003, and diagnosed with paranoid schizorphrenia, but the article linked to upthread says he was assessed again more recently and the psychiatrist didn't agree with that diagnosis, although he did say he displayed psychotic symptoms. The defence made a number of claims during the proceedings, but the article didn't mention whether a psych report was available or commissioned. Here's the link to the article to save you going back through the thread:
http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/local/sheffield-graffiti-vandal-fista-jailed-1-6802219
And I explained in post 46 that my view is that underlying issues like mental health should be properly considered while someone is being taken to court.
krink
I'll do it this afternoon
Many people hate banksy for many reasons but from a graff point of view for me it's this, he's a disrespectful cunt! He started out in graffiti (proper graffiti) but couldn't do it so he started to use stencils. fair enough, off you go....nope, he repeatedly slags off real graffiti, yet without it he wouldn't have the lifestyle he enjoys now. He thinks he's better than graffiti writers. He thinks putting a stencil up somewhere is the same as going all city. He doesn't take the risks real graffiti writers do - y'know those trains he did with the monkey image? yeah, he didn't even do them. he paid real graff artists to do it for him. He's fake.
He even tried it on with Robbo, an old school king. He believed his own hype so much he thought he could sneer down his nose at the people who put him where he is. Robbo, not being a cunt, introduced himself to Banksy at some do, 'never heard of you' said Banksy. Well, he won't forget the smack in the chops. Then he destroyed one of the oldest pieces of graff in London, again, Robbo the target. What a cunt.
Don't get me started on the other reasons! lol
Doctor Carrot
Marxist Henchman
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