In January 2025, Judge Leonard P. Stark sentenced Casey Robert Goonan to 235 months in prison, 15 years of supervised release, and over $90,000 in restitution for firebombing a UC Berkeley police vehicle. No lives were harmed and the damage was confined to a single car, yet prosecutors applied terrorism enhancements to secure one of the harshest possible sentences.
The U.S. uses punitive sentencing to suppress dissent, from environmental activists to the extraordinary prison terms given to BLM lawyers Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman. It echoes the decades-long imprisonment of Leonard Peltier, one of the starkest examples of the legal system’s targeting of political resistance.
In the UK, T. Hoxha, a 29-year-old Palestine Action activist, has been imprisoned since 2024 as part of the “Filton 24.” She was on hunger strike to protest degrading prison conditions, the denial of her rights, and the broader criminalisation of Palestine solidarity work. Britain’s Carcerals’ logic demonstrates how penal control is used to punish political dissent.
