Youth Sentencing: 6 Months' Detention and Training Order for £15 Million Newcastle Arson

Two youths have been sentenced to 6-month and 4-month detention and training order respectively, for their part in setting fire to a historic building in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

The males, now both aged 17, each admitted an offence of arson when they appeared at North Tyneside Youth Court on Wednesday, 24th January 2024.

They were sentenced by the same court on Wednesday, 21st February 2024. As some readers may well be fascinated by the headline sentence, I have explained sentencing process in more detail towards the bottom of this article.

Magistrates heard that the youths, who cannot (yet) be named for legal reasons, entered former student accommodation at Henderson Hall, High Heaton, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, on the afternoon of Thursday, 8th June 2023.

Henderson Hall is an extensive grade II listed Georgian manor house, owned by the University of Newcastle, which has stood unoccupied for several years.

Once inside the pair set fire to a shower curtain. The flames spread rapidly in the tinder-dry building and the youths fled the scene. More than 50 firefighters worked for several hours to control the blaze. The building suffered around £15 million worth of damage, with much of its roof being completely destroyed.

Prosecutor Gurjot Kaur, told the court that the pair had arranged to visit the abandoned building via Snapchat. One had said to the other "it's sick you know" (which is a youth term of approval).

The teens had entered the property through a broken window. Once inside they filmed their own attempts to set fire to a mattress. They then moved into a bathroom, where they used a purple lighter to set fire to a shower curtain.

One of the offenders voiced their disappointment that the fabric was slow to catch alight, saying "please don't stop". Very soon the flames had taken hold and began to spread out of control.

For posterity the youths each began to record a video of their handiwork.

On his video, the first youth said: "Oh my god we're going to burn the fucking building down."

The second youth said: "Oh shit it's getting worse. We're going to burn the fucking building down."

A university worker who lived on the site had been alerted to smoke billowing from the roof. The worker saw the youths on the roof of the building and shouted at them: "Get off. It's not worth your life". The pair then made efforts to flee the scene, but one of them was detained by the worker.

The second youth, who managed to escape over the fence, later sent voice messages to an uninvolved third-party in which he said he needed to avoid the police.

In relation to the fire, the youth told the third-party: "It's fine, I won't get anything on my record. It will just be a thing for minors. It's just a little bit of arson. Pretty much getting away with it, I don't think I'll get a fine or anything."

The youths were dealt with separately by the court.

Adam Scott, mitigating for the first youth who had set fire to the shower curtain, said: "This place appears in (the youth's) nightmares. It's something that's staying with him constantly."

Mr Scott said that his client was naive (or stupid, depending on your perspective) to the risk of the fire spreading.

He continued: "When he was lighting the shower curtain he thought, in his mind, there would be a fire. A fire he could film for whatever purpose - Snapchat I don't know - but it would burn out with the tiles in the confines of that area. That seems to be the thinking that was going through his mind at that time."

John Fleet JP, Presiding Justice, asked the first youth if he had anything to say that might persuade the Bench to impose a referral order instead of a period in custody.

The first youth replied: "I think it's quite obvious the thought process about sending me away. You see the videos and you see the figure and 15 mil, but at the end of the day it was unintentional, it was reckless, it was stupid."

The first youth was handed a 6 month detention and training order. He was said to grinning as he was led down to the cells.

Amy Lamb, mitigating for the second youth, told the court that her client was studying for A-levels, had a part time job and ambitions to attend university (although maybe not locally anymore). She handed the Bench a letter of mitigation he had written.

Addressing the court, Ms Lamb said: "In terms of mitigation he is a boy who is genuinely sorry and remorseful for his actions. His letter sets out deeply how mortified and remorseful he is to be here after committing his offence."

She added: "At the time when it took hold he has tried to use a fire extinguisher, he's been unable to make it work. He fully accepts that he ran away from the scene in a panic.

"It was not his ambition at all to cause large scale damage."

The second youth was handed a 4 month detention and training order.

Allocation:

These youth defendants are not accused of a grave crime or one where the dangerousness provisions apply. As will be discussed in the next section, their offences can be comfortably sentenced within the powers available to the Youth Court. That being the case, there was no reason to refer these matters to the Crown Court for sentencing.

Sentencing:

Many people reading about this case will no doubt be of the view that these relatively short custodial sentences are inappropriate for such a serious arson.

There are no specific youth sentencing guidelines in relation to arson, so the court has to rely on the adult arson guidelines and tailor them accordingly.

As discussed in my earlier "An Introduction to the Youth Court" article, the general rule of thumb when sentencing a youth defendant using adult guidelines is to assume the sentence starting point for a youth is 1/3 to 1/2 of that of an adult.

We do not know the full circumstances of this particular case, but I shall now endeavour to explain how the Bench has arrived at the sentences it has.

There does not appear to be any suggestion that these youths deliberately set out to torch Henderson Hall, or intentionally ended up doing so. That being the case, the offence would appear to fall into Category B in terms of culpability.

The amount of damaged caused, at £15 million, is unquestionably very high, so the offence would appear to fall into Category 1 in terms of harm.

Referring to the arson sentence starting points and ranges, reproduced in the table below, we can see that a category B1 offence would have a starting point of 1 year, 6 months' custody and a range of 9 months' to 3 years' custody for an adult defendant of previous good character.

The Bench would then take account of any aggravating and mitigating factors and either increase or decrease the sentence from the starting point.

For sake of argument, let's assume that there are no real aggravating or mitigating factors. In this case, a sentence around the starting point of 1 year, 6 months' custody would be likely.

As mentioned earlier, the Bench would then reduce the sentence to between 1/3 and 1/2 to reflect that it was a youth being sentenced. Having done that, we might end up with a sentence of around 6 months' custody for the youth.

If the youth admitted the offence at the first opportunity, they would also be entitled to 1/3 credit for an early guilty plea. That would reduce their sentence to one of 4 months' custody.

The court can make a detention and training order for 4 months, so would impose that sentence.

It should be noted that 4 months' is the minimum detention and training order available to the court, so had the court arrived at a sentence below 4 months it would have had to impose an alternative, non-custodial sentence.

Further reading:

Blackstones' Handbook of Youths In the Criminal Courts (aff. link)