Public Opinion on Prison Sentences for Just Stop Oil Supporters

Why this matters

The JSO sentences were handed down in a context of increasingly restrictive protest legislation in the UK, including the Policing Act and the Public Order Act. The Civicus Monitor had already downgraded the UK to ‘obstructed’ status for civil society freedoms. How the public actually feels about this direction of travel – as opposed to how media outlets assume they feel – has direct implications for how movements, funders, and politicians should respond.

What we found

A clear majority of the British public – 59% – found the sentences too harsh, while 28% found them proportionate and just 14% too lenient. This held across regions: even in England’s North West and East, which were the most sceptical of JSO, average scores still fell on the ‘harsh’ side of the scale. London, Scotland, and Wales found the sentences particularly harsh. Political affiliation was strongly linked to opinion – right-leaning respondents were more likely to find the sentences lenient – but Conservative and Reform voters still averaged close to ‘proportionate’ rather than clearly ‘lenient’. Education level also mattered independently of politics: those with higher education were 55% more likely to find the sentences harsh than those with low levels of education.

What it means for the movement

The findings illustrate a striking gap between media narratives about public opinion and what the public actually thinks – an extreme example of the echo chamber effect, where right-leaning outlets appear to have significantly overestimated public support for harsh sentences. For the climate movement, the results suggest that the British public’s discomfort with JSO’s tactics does not translate into support for criminalising protest. This is a meaningful distinction: movements can be unpopular in their methods while still commanding broad support for the principle that non-violent civil disobedience should not be treated as a serious crime.