04 April 2008
R (White) v Crown Court at Blackfriars [2008] EWHC 510 (Admin)
A football banning order under s 14A of the Football Spectators Act 1989 should be imposed only where there are strong grounds for concluding that the individual subject of the order has a propensity for taking part in football hooliganism.
The court is entitled to take into account and to give great weight to deterrence; there are clear benefits in it being widely known that a person who assaults an official at a football match is liable to be made the subject of a football banning order even if the incident was, for that person, an isolated one.
