Verdicts · Justice
What the UK thinks about justice
Settled referendums
45
since Jul 2026
Votes cast
9,309
all time, on justice
This week
497
votes · 1 referendums settled
Written opinions
398
all time, left by voters
This week's opinion highlightThe most respected opinion this week
“If we tear up international treaties for an untested domestic bill, our basic rights become a political football that any government can water down when convenient. British lawyers literally helped draft the ECHR after WWII based on our own values... So it's just unnecessary and more bureaucracy.”
BenL, debating No on “Should the UK replace human rights treaties with its own bill of rights?” · read the thread →
4
Respects
Most respected on justice this week
- 1.BenL4 respects
- 2.JustFactsNotBeliefs3 respects
- 3.DanielW3 respects
- 4.jezwootton3 respects
- 5.Akz993 respects
Who answered this week
The 512 placed voters lean Centre Right overall.
H. Left6%
Left19%
C. Left8%
Centre6%
C. Right11%
Right42%
H. Right8%
Regions this week
South EastCentre
LondonCentre
ScotlandCentre
North WestC. Right
YorkshireC. Right
South WestRight
North EastC. Right
East of EnglandCentre
East MidlandsCentre
West MidlandsCentre
Northern IrelandRight
Votes each week
497so far this week
55727 Jul
1753 Aug
60210 Aug
1,68317 Aug
3,94424 Aug
49731 Aug
All-time justice highlights
This week
1 settled · 497 votes
0% YES
Majority for
NO 39%
497 votes
0 skipped
by @Lewis67⏱ Ended 30 Aug 2026
Should the UK replace human rights treaties with its own bill of rights?
The verdict
A warning that rights could become “a political football” was the floor’s sharpest line; Yes still carried the chamber’s vote for treaty withdrawal.
Last week
10 settled · 3,944 votes
0% YES
Majority for
NO 44%
453 votes
0 skipped
by @JasonC⏱ Ended 29 Aug 2026
Should the UK legalise approved pepper spray for adults to carry with training for self-defence?
The verdict
“Guns are better, but always better than nothing” captured the Yes side’s blunt logic as approved pepper spray secured a narrow win.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 10%
444 votes
0 skipped
by @CDRook⏱ Ended 29 Aug 2026
Should penalties for AI-generated CSAM be the same as for human-created CSAM?
The verdict
A room that saw no legitimate gap between AI and human-made CSAM gave Yes nine in ten votes; tellingly, every written argument came from the winning side.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 38%
453 votes
0 skipped
by @OftenRight⏱ Ended 29 Aug 2026
Are prisoner rehabilitation programmes worth the time, money, and effort?
The verdict
A prison debate that sounded less like a choice between punishment and mercy than a demand for both: rehabilitation carried the vote, while the strongest Yes voices insisted on tougher sentences too.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 22%
440 votes
0 skipped
by @JasonC⏱ Ended 28 Aug 2026
Should non-crime hate incidents be scrapped?
The verdict
“There is no crime. Yet NCHIs are a punishment” captured the room’s mood: Yes won by more than three to one, with free speech and police priorities doing most of the work.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 28%
440 votes
0 skipped
by @HenryPott⏱ Ended 28 Aug 2026
Should the UK end Sharia Councils?
The verdict
The floor’s sharpest Yes voice called the councils “a non-compatible system with UK law”; the more striking story was that the winning side’s formal-law argument had to confront a serious warning about what prohibition might drive underground.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 32%
393 votes
0 skipped
by @refnation⏱ Ended 27 Aug 2026
Should Palestine Action remain proscribed as a terrorist organisation?
The verdict
“Breaking and destroying property is not civil disobedience,” said the floor’s highest-rated voice, and Yes won by two to one. The room treated the question less as a test of sympathy for Palestine than as a line to draw around political violence.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 12%
393 votes
0 skipped
by @AlexHolstead⏱ Ended 27 Aug 2026
Should litterers receive community service picking litter in addition to a fine?
The verdict
Litterers were told to clean up after themselves as well as pay, but the sharpest arguments for it came with caveats about accidents, repetition and enforcement.
0% NO
Majority against
YES 48%
323 votes
0 skipped
by @Slawomir⏱ Ended 25 Aug 2026
Should convicted offenders have to repay the cost of their punishment?
The verdict
The room balked at turning a prison sentence into a second invoice: “Pushing people into debt” was the sharpest warning as the vote edged No.
0% NO
Majority against
YES 7%
308 votes
0 skipped
by @refnation⏱ Ended 24 Aug 2026
Should police officers lose the right to use tasers and pepper spray?
The verdict
Disarming the police was a non-starter in this room, but the strongest No case still insisted that “Safety and civil liberties must work together.” No won by more than ten to one.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 19%
297 votes
0 skipped
by @TrueVoice62⏱ Ended 24 Aug 2026
Should each town and city have named local officers that residents know?
The verdict
“Policing by consent only works when communities trust the officers serving them” captured the room’s central case: a decisive Yes for named local officers, despite a smaller but sharply focused fear of making them targets.
Every justice verdict
- YES 61%Should the UK replace human rights treaties with its own bill of rights?A warning that rights could become “a political football” was the floor’s sharpest line; Yes still carried the chamber’s vote for treaty withdrawal.
- YES 56%Should the UK legalise approved pepper spray for adults to carry with training for self-defence?“Guns are better, but always better than nothing” captured the Yes side’s blunt logic as approved pepper spray secured a narrow win.
- YES 90%Should penalties for AI-generated CSAM be the same as for human-created CSAM?A room that saw no legitimate gap between AI and human-made CSAM gave Yes nine in ten votes; tellingly, every written argument came from the winning side.
- YES 62%Are prisoner rehabilitation programmes worth the time, money, and effort?A prison debate that sounded less like a choice between punishment and mercy than a demand for both: rehabilitation carried the vote, while the strongest Yes voices insisted on tougher sentences too.
- YES 78%Should non-crime hate incidents be scrapped?“There is no crime. Yet NCHIs are a punishment” captured the room’s mood: Yes won by more than three to one, with free speech and police priorities doing most of the work.
- YES 72%Should the UK end Sharia Councils?The floor’s sharpest Yes voice called the councils “a non-compatible system with UK law”; the more striking story was that the winning side’s formal-law argument had to confront a serious warning about what prohibition might drive underground.
- YES 68%Should Palestine Action remain proscribed as a terrorist organisation?“Breaking and destroying property is not civil disobedience,” said the floor’s highest-rated voice, and Yes won by two to one. The room treated the question less as a test of sympathy for Palestine than as a line to draw around political violence.
- YES 88%Should litterers receive community service picking litter in addition to a fine?Litterers were told to clean up after themselves as well as pay, but the sharpest arguments for it came with caveats about accidents, repetition and enforcement.
- NO 52%Should convicted offenders have to repay the cost of their punishment?The room balked at turning a prison sentence into a second invoice: “Pushing people into debt” was the sharpest warning as the vote edged No.
- NO 93%Should police officers lose the right to use tasers and pepper spray?Disarming the police was a non-starter in this room, but the strongest No case still insisted that “Safety and civil liberties must work together.” No won by more than ten to one.
- YES 81%Should each town and city have named local officers that residents know?“Policing by consent only works when communities trust the officers serving them” captured the room’s central case: a decisive Yes for named local officers, despite a smaller but sharply focused fear of making them targets.
- NO 68%Should the Andrew Tate allegations get a public inquiry, not just a criminal trial?The courtroom won out over spectacle: “Let the law run its course” captured a decisive No verdict, while the sole Yes voice called the case a possible “witch hunt”.
- YES 62%Should the UK make whole life orders mandatory with no judicial discretion for the murder of police officers?“Our officers need our support and protection at every level,” one Yes voter wrote; the chamber backed mandatory whole-life orders by two votes to one, despite its strongest-rated objections being arguments for judicial discretion.
- YES 78%Should prisoners who are physically and mentally able be forced to carry out supervised community improvement works?“Better to be outside doing something constructive than in a cell doing pushups” became the room’s memorable case for Yes, which won more than three to one.
- NO 50%Should we hang child murderers?The No side prevailed in a dead heat, with the floor’s sharpest case warning that “One person mistakenly killed by the state is argument enough”.
- YES 71%Is UK policing and justice applied unequally based on the identity or politics of those involved?“Equal justice must be seen as well as promised” became the room’s governing thought; Yes won by more than two to one, despite the debate’s only No voice challenging the question’s framing.
- YES 78%Are police targeting compliant citizens over uncooperative offenders?“Cooperation should count in your favour” was the chamber’s defining complaint: the claim that police pursue the easy target rather than the serious threat won the backing of more than three voters for every one against.
- YES 61%Should all foreign prisoners be sent abroad to serve their sentences?“I voted yes, but that's a generalisation”: the Yes side won two to one, while its strongest voices kept qualifying the word “all”.
- YES 63%Would an independent inquiry into grooming gangs ease community tensions?“this isn't going away” was the sharpest warning in a vote that backed an independent inquiry, with Yes winning by nearly two votes in three. The result endorsed investigation more readily than it endorsed the promise of reconciliation.
- NO 81%Is the prisoner early release scheme an effective way at dealing with prison overcrowding?A scheme designed to relieve overcrowding was judged a symptom, not a solution: No won by more than four to one, with the sharpest case arguing that early release is pointless if prisoners are simply recalled.
Show all 45 verdicts ↓
- NO 52%Should the death penalty be brought back for specific crimes?“Wrongful convictions happen,” the floor’s most-respected No voice warned; No narrowly held off a Yes campaign that supplied most of the argument, and much of the moral heat.
- YES 76%Should the prisoner escort and custody service be reformed to reduce court delays?A three-to-one verdict for reform arrived with almost no opposition case on the page at all, leaving the No side's near-third of the vote unexplained by argument even as the Yes side itself split over what reform should mean.
- YES 72%Should Andy Burnham recall Parliament to exempt serious offenders from early release?A near three-to-one margin for recalling Parliament suggests this was less a debate than a verdict already reached, with the tiny No camp reduced to arguing about process rather than the policy itself.
- YES 55%Should prisoners pay for their own incarceration like people pay for social care?A modest majority backed charging prisoners for their keep, but the closeness of the vote and the threadbare arguments on both sides suggest the floor was more comfortable with the instinct than the mechanics — 74 to 60 is a verdict without much conviction behind it.
- YES 54%Should we reintroduce the death penalty for the most serious crimes?A narrow but decisive majority backed reviving capital punishment for the worst crimes, closing a 60-year-old chapter of British justice by an 8-point margin even as the floor's sharpest arguments came from the side that lost.
- YES 51%Should those convicted beyond any reasonable doubt of child sexual abuse be put to death?Reviving a punishment Britain formally buried in 1998, the chamber narrowly backed execution for child sex offenders — 55 to 52 of 107 votes — with women considerably more wary of the remedy than men.
- YES 93%Should the police enforce the law equally even if it conflicts with certain cultural or community expectations?Consensus, not controversy, turned out to be the story here: on a question engineered to sound like a culture-war flashpoint, voters closed ranks behind uniform enforcement, with Yes carrying the chamber by 110 votes to 8.
- YES 70%If someone falsely accuses someone else of racism, should they face criminal penalties?Consensus rather than culture-war combat was the story here: across every age band bar the youngest, roughly seven in ten backed criminal penalties for false racism claims, a chamber otherwise prone to fracture on identity questions closing ranks instead.
- YES 55%If the death penalty is reintroduced, should it apply to murder, rape, and all violent crimes including child abuse?A narrow chamber majority backed extending capital punishment beyond murder to rape and "all violent crimes including child abuse," even as the sweeping wording of that expansion was the very thing many No voters said they could not accept, in a vote that split 67 to 55.
- YES 63%Should judges have less discretion when sentencing repeat offenders?Nearly two to one in favour, the chamber's verdict landed less as fury at judges than as impatience with a system built around rehabilitation that keeps producing repeat victims, with almost every age band settling into comfortable majorities for tighter sentencing rules.
- YES 86%Should the prison system in England and Wales be fundamentally reformed?Rare is the vote on this platform that unites 16-year-olds and pensioners alike, but a call for wholesale reform of prisons in England and Wales did just that, passing by six to one among the 124 who logged a view.
- YES 87%Should people be arrested for threatening to shoot an MP?After a former MP's killing put political violence at the top of the news, the chamber reached for the blunt instrument of the law almost unanimously, backing arrest for anyone who threatens to shoot an MP by well over four to one.
- YES 67%Should the UK bring back whole-life sentences for more offences?On a question that touches Britain's rawest instincts about punishment, this chamber came down decisively for expansion, with two in three voters backing whole-life orders for a broader range of violent and sexual crimes, though the generation that will spend longest inside the system it's judging proved the most reluctant to harden it.
- YES 51%Should police use AI to review and summarise digital evidence in criminal investigations?A vote this tight on a question this practical suggests Britain's instinct on AI in policing isn't ideological but conditional, and the chamber split almost exactly down the middle, with Yes edging it by the barest of margins, on whether machines can be trusted with the mountains of digital evidence now clogging the justice system.
- NO 60%Does treating the Widdecombe murder as terrorism strengthen public confidence in UK justice?The chamber's doubts here were not really about whether Ann Widdecombe's murder fits the legal definition of terrorism, but about whether anyone should take the authorities' word for it — a scepticism that carried No to a clear win, 82 votes to 54.
- YES 95%Should the UK introduce a legal duty of candour on public officials to tell the truth in inquiries?Some referendums split the country down the middle; this one barely found a country to split, with voters here backing a legal duty of candour for public officials by 62 votes to 3.
- NO 71%Should the government continue its early prisoner release scheme?The scheme meant to ease prison overcrowding met a chamber that overwhelmingly rejected it, but the real surprise was who defected — pensioners, not the young, proved its most sympathetic audience.
- YES 84%Should the UK change the 1971 law to allow deportation of Shabir Ahmed?When a question about a specific, notorious offender produces near-unanimous agreement across every age group and both sexes, the vote isn't really about him at all — it's a verdict on the law itself, and here that verdict came in at better than five to one.
- YES 81%Should Parliament pass the Public Office (Accountability) Bill to create a Hillsborough Law?The one bloc that voted with a single voice was the one furthest from student politics: every one of the 55-64s backed a Hillsborough law, in a vote where support was strong everywhere but never quite unanimous elsewhere.
- YES 65%Should the Crime and Policing Act 2026 grant police new powers to tackle antisocial behaviour, shoplifting and knife crime?Backing for tougher police powers on shoplifting, knife crime and antisocial behaviour clears two to one, but it is the over-55s and women driving that margin, while younger and male voters split almost evenly.
- NO 58%Should ID cards with fingerprints be introduced to improve suspect identification and border security?A scheme that resurfaces every decade or so found no more favour this time, with 35 to 48 voting it down, but the real fracture was generational, not ideological — the middle-aged flatly rejected it while pensioners embraced it.
- YES 62%Does the UK have two tier justice against white people?The clearest verdict came from the middle-aged, not the young: 45-54s and 35-44s swung decisively behind claims of two-tier justice, while it was the 25-34s who nearly split the difference, as this Birmingham flashpoint carried a 24-point yes verdict overall.
- YES 74%Should the UK government overhaul police leadership recruitment and promotion?The verdict here isn't the three-to-one margin for reform but the generational cliff behind it: every over-55 who voted backed an overhaul, while the 25-34s and 45-54s split clean down the middle.
- NO 65%Should non-British face tougher sentencing for crimes?No, and not close: 34 votes to 18, a 30-point margin against tougher sentencing for non-British offenders, with the loudest opposition coming from the over-55s who rejected it almost unanimously.
- NO 60%Should the UK reintroduce the death penalty?No won comfortably, 28 votes to 19, with reintroduction rejected 60-40 despite the one issue where public sentiment has long run ahead of Westminster's cross-party consensus.