Four reports in 2020 independently suggested that the legal framework regulating football spectators requires revisiting. An SGSA report recommended trialling Safe Standing, the Crouch ‘Fan Led Review’ suggested piloting reform to alcohol laws, Baroness Casey’s Review of the Euro2020 Final recommended introducing a host of new offences, while the Law Commission rejected the need for new Hate Crime offences and hinted that the whole system was probably due a fundamental review. The attention these laws are now receiving is long overdue.

Legal measures designed to prevent football-related disorder have been fundamentally reactive and some bear all the hallmarks of the worst kind of “panic law”, rushed through without sufficient scrutiny and proving either ineffective or counter-productive to the problems they are seeking to confront. Some provisions are still seeking to confront problems from the 1980s, failing to respond to how the football industry and fan behaviour has fundamentally changed since then. Others have hampered the ability of police forces to develop more effective and legitimate tactics and strategies to manage football crowds. In this lecture, Prof Geoff Pearson considers evidence from 25-years of research into legal and policing responses to football crowd disorder, putting forward recommendations for reform of the law and the way police forces utilise legal powers to prevent football spectator violence and disorder.

NB: At this stage we’re planning to hold this event face to face but we may have to move it online depending on guidelines closer to the time