Well, OK then - did mobs of wealthy youth swarm into poor and middle-class neighborhoods, smash buildings, and set things on fire?
While certainly poverty isn’t the whole story it’s hard to argue it’s not a factor. Part of what complicates these discussions is the human desire to find just one easy explanation for it all. There isn’t. There are always a number of factors at work.
As I’ve already pointed out there’s not real divide in the rioters; they’re of all economic classes, ages, races and proffessions.
The first people to be sentanced have included a primary school assistant teacher and an 11 year old (no direct connection).
As I said before I don’t think many of the richest in society took part, but I want to see evidence it was the poorest.
Sure. But I’m trying to bring some balance here.
Shit going down and people saying “Well it’s poverty. We need to tackle the deprivation.” is what always happens in this country.
There are not enough people saying “There’s a wicked element in every society, and if you don’t tackle it, it grows”.
You’d think this would now be the conclusion: that people would realize how badly wrong their policies were because they’ve led to these appalling scenes.
But apparently not. There is nothing that could happen that people won’t make excuses for. 
Can we get a “trying to understand the reasons behind the rioting (to stop it from happening again) is not excusing or supporting the behaviour of the rioters” sticky or something?
^ This.
There is a difference between explaining and excusing, and in order to explain we have to question.
Well, from what I’m reading I think the opposing view is something like “the reason behind the rioting is that the rioters are bad people, end of story.” If you approach the situation from that point of view, hanging and flogging 'em makes sense.
In Canada, we had furious rioting after the Stanley Cup in Vancouver, quite recently.
Oddly, though, few here advanced the theory that the rioting in Vancouver was caused by deep-seated social malaise created by a lack of opportunity for Vancouver’s youth. The authorities blamed “anarchists”, but quite evidently most of the rioters were neither disadvantaged youth nor anarchists.
Rather, the focus was on mistakes made by the authorities in not anticipating the trouble and not responding to it in a timely and efficient manner.
A third possibility is that the rioting was enabled by a lack of prompt response by the authorities, and thus fed on itself (see Vancouver’s 2011 Riot, cited above).
Rioting doesn’t really need a deep-seated cause. Certainly there was none in Vancouver. What it needs is a trigger (be it protest at a police shooting or losing a hockey game) and opportunity for the social compact to evidently break down, allowing some people to do stuff they are usually inhibited from doing (burn stuff down for fun, steal things, beat people up for kicks, etc.).
An element in that opportunity is the advent of social media, which enables crowds to be summoned quickly.
From the Vancouver Riot wiki entry:
What is notable is the (apparently, proud) participation of people who had never been in trouble with the police before, who had jobs etc.
I’m trying to understand the reasons too, but my focus has been on personal responsability, whereas the poverty explanation diminishes it.
If poverty were the sole explanation there would be no personal responsability.
I suspect this may be directed at me, so let’s make it clear: I don’t think it’s just “they’re bad people, end of story”.
Nor have I said anything about capital or corporal punishment.
Let me put it this way: Let’s say I had a teenage son and I discover he has been stealing money from my wallet. Then I confront him and he says “Shut up, I can take whatever I want from you”.
I wouldn’t think: my son is pure evil: he must be killed. Nor would I think: this is a sign of poverty, I must raise his allowance.
I would think clearly discipline has failed and my son has no respect at all for me. I need to repair this situation. I need to do that first before I can fix any other problems my son may have.
It may well be that due to the video/photo documentation of this riot we learn something that has been overlooked, ignored, or missed in previous urban riots… and wouldn’t that be an interesting development?
For all we know, that sort of mix of people is more typical than past notions, in which case there might need to be quite a bit of revision on the theories about riots.
“The Middle Class Proletariat — The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’ attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite. Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.”
— UK Ministry of Defence report: 'The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 2007-2036’ (Third Edition) p.96, March 2007
Whoops. Taking everything not nailed down is correct. But…
Heh, echoes what I was saying about the Vancouver riots.
It wasn’t the no-hopers from the downtown eastside (notorious for its poverty) that rioted - it was often people with jobs and money.
Not directed at you personally, and my remarks about “hang 'em and flog 'em” should be taken as hyperbole. There haven’t been all that many people here advocating execution or whatever.
Your point seems reasonable enough to me, and if one of my children behaved that way I’d probably consider the issue in the same way. But I’m not convinced it’s possible to extrapolate from a family situation to one where we’re dealing with a riotous mob attacking multiple cities.
I do think there’s a problem, and it’s not that we aren’t paying these people enough JSA or ESA or Housing Benefit. There apparently isn’t a sense of community, to the extent that people seem quite happy to set fire to their own neighbourhoods. Someone else here, on one of the threads about this, asked why we have raised a generation of sociopaths. I think this is important, and I don’t think it’s possible to explain this problem, much less solve it, while ignoring that question.
By all means we should kick the arses of those rioters we can catch. I’ve got no problem with that - lawless thugs should be in jail. Just as long as we don’t pretend that by doing so we’ve solved the problem.
And blah blah blah. I was wrong about the UK riots, but not the others. The “irrational and factually inaccurate” thing here is your overwrought response to the breaking of your taboo against speaking honestly about black lawlessness and violence. If you’re going to continue in this vein, take it to the Pit, where I won’t be joining you.
I agree there’s little sense of community, but getting it back could take decades if it’s possible at all.
I’ve been living at my current address for about a year. I don’t know anyone on the streets nearest my home. I’ve said literally “all right” a couple of times to the guy who lives next door, but I don’t even know his name.
And I think I’m pretty representative of british people today.
I’ve thought about why it’s like this. One factor is that people view strangers with suspicion. Maybe we’ve had too many paedo headlines for too long 
Also we should got more zero tolerance-y with the riots. It’s weird saying this with the background of the arab spring, but the situation here is very different. Here it’s about disdain for the police and a feeling of being untouchable.
The more I think about it, the more I think the analogy of a teenager flexing his muscles works well. Because many of them were teenagers and they are just flexing their muscles. It’s just difficult to see this for some, because no-one can believe it would get to this stage. But if you let someone get away with x, tomorrow they’ll try x + 1. Rinse and repeat for about 30 years of policy.
For various reasons I don’t think we’ll see riots like this for the next couple of years. But unless something changes (something much more significant than the changes so far), I’m sure something worse will happen in time…
http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUnderstandingWhyCrime2004.pdf
Tougher approach, more discipline and firm boundaries for youth.
More apprenticeships and army service for unemployed.
More police and more prisons works. See Steve Levitt’s paper on causes of the fall in US crime rates.
For long term beneficiaries, contraception should be a condition of eligibility after 12 months. This is just a basic reciprocal obligation to receiving state money.
Well, since this thread is specifically about the UK riots…
But I won’t confuse you with the facts.
That’s fucking hilarious. You get caught, once again, spewing unfounded racist bullshit, and you act outraged that nobody takes you seriously.
A 40 percent unemployment for young people is part of the reason. There are a lot of people without hope. The direction the government is headed, looks pretty bad to them.