Southport inquiry to consider curfews for ‘potential criminals'

Times

08-07-2025

The Southport inquiry will examine whether courts should be allowed to impose sweeping restrictions on people suspected of planning serious violent offences, even if they have not committed any crime.
Opening proceedings on Tuesday at Liverpool town hall, Sir Adrian Fulford, the chair, said he inquiry will consider whether the state should have powers to impose curfews, electronic tags, internet bans and limits on social media use for individuals deemed to pose a risk of serious harm.
The inquiry was established after the deadly knife attack carried out in July last year by Axel Rudakubana, a teenager known to social services, police, Prevent and NHS mental health services.
Rudakubana, then 17, fatally stabbed three young girls, — Bebe King, 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9 — during a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, gravely injuring ten more people including eight children.
Police ruled out terrorism after finding no clear ideological motive, but described how Rudakubana appeared to have been influenced by a range of violent and extremist content.
The government's Crime and Policing Bill, which is progressing through parliament, would create 'youth diversion orders' for under-22s feared to be at risk of being drawn into terrorism, intended to steer them away from prosecution and towards deradicalisation programmes.
The inquiry will consider whether similar measures should also apply more widely, including to non-terrorist cases, or whether such a move would undermine 'core civil liberties'.
It will also examine whether Prevent, the government's counterextremism programme, needs to be overhauled to 'address young people who are drawn into extreme violence without an accompanying commitment to a particular religious or political cause'.
• Prevent scheme 'fails to tackle terrorism funded by organised crime'
Referring to the Southport attack, Fulford said: 'The present offences were not terrorist-related. A question therefore to be answered during the inquiry is whether the state should have the capacity to impose restrictions on an individual, those above and below 22, when there is strong evidence that they intend to commit serious violent crime but they have not yet taken steps such as to justify their arrest or prosecution, whether terrorist-related or otherwise.
'If a sufficiently strong risk is established of an intention commit an offence of serious violence, should the courts be in a position, for instance, to impose a curfew; require a tag; otherwise limit their freedom of movement and their ability to carry out research on the internet and to use social media; and to require psychological intervention until the risk has sufficiently been alleviated?
'Or would such a development run counter to the basic underpinnings of our democracy and our core civil liberties?'
Fulford stressed he would not make judgments on matters before they are heard but the undisputed facts 'tend to suggest that far from being an unforeseeable catastrophic event, the perpetrator posed a very serious and significant risk of violent harm'. Rudakubana's engagement with police, mental health services, his education and 'his relationship with his family' would also be examined, he said.
Fulford added: 'His ability, unhindered, to access gravely violent material on the internet, to order knives online at a young age, and then to leave home unsupervised to commit the present attack, speaks to a wholesale and general failure to intervene effectively, or indeed at all, to address the risks that he posed.'
The inquiry will examine whether risk assessments and information-sharing between agencies need to be strengthened, including whether a single official should be appointed to co-ordinate responses to individuals considered at high risk of serious violence.
Fulford said the inquiry would also scrutinise 'the ease with which the perpetrator armed himself'. Despite being under 18, Rudakubana was able to buy weapons online, including the 20cm chef's knife from Amazon that he used in the attack. While the Crime and Policing Bill proposes tougher restrictions on online sales of knives and crossbows, Fulford said he would hear evidence on whether these measures go far enough.
He described the Southport attack as 'one of the most egregious crimes in our country's history' and pledged that the inquiry would 'identify without fear or favour all of the relevant failings' to give the 'the best chance of intervening' in similar cases in future.
He added: 'As a society we are not helpless when confronted with individuals who are known to be contemplating acts of such depravity and although no solution will be foolproof, we can identify all of the robust steps which should be taken to protect ourselves, and particularly the most vulnerable, from horrors of this kind.'
• Southport survivors' parents: We don't feel lucky
The inquiry will take place in two phases. Phase one, beginning in September, will examine the events leading up to the attack, including missed opportunities to prevent Rudakubana. Phase two, set for 2026, will 'consider the wider phenomenon of children and young people who are being drawn into extreme violence, determining what can and should be done to reverse this troubling trend,' Fulford said.
The prime minister has previously called for a 'nothing off the table' approach, stating that the attack must be 'a line in the sand'.
Witnesses and agencies are expected to be fully candid, and Fulford warned he would 'not hesitate' to use statutory powers if necessary to compel co-operation.
The chairman, who retired from the Court of Appeal in 2022, was one of the longest-serving members of the senior judiciary of England and Wales. He previously sat as a judge of the International Criminal Court and in 2021 he sentenced the former Met Police officer Wayne Couzens to a whole-life order for the murder of Sarah Everard.
• Mother of Southport attack victim: 'We had everything'
His 'immediate priority' having been appointed to the inquiry was to 'organise a series of visits and meetings in Southport in order to meet the victims and their families', he said. He explained that Rudakubana would only be referred to as 'the perpetrator' or 'AR' throughout the proceedings, to protect the families from further trauma.
The lawyers for the bereaved families of the three girls said they were 'committed to getting answers for them'.
Rachael Wong and Chris Walker of the law firm Bond Turner said: 'We know that nothing the inquiry reveals or subsequently recommends will change the unimaginable loss felt by the families of Elsie, Alice and Bebe, but we all now have a responsibility to ensure that something like this never happens again.
'We will be doing all we can to assist the chair through the inquiry and uncover the truth. It is only through intense public scrutiny that real change can be effected.'