Key issues in criminology WEEK 11
Understanding the 2011 disorder
What is a riot?
- Typically ‘outburst’ (not planned), involving relatively indiscriminate property damage, in
reaction to perceived grievance
- Typically involving marginalised populations
- Rule of law and policing authorities effectively suspended
- Rarely redresses grievances
- All too often in oppression rather than progression
- Powder-keg & tinderbox model (Abrams and Hogg, 2002)
- Modern urban riot as assertion of rule of the street vs. rule of the hated police (Ilan, 2015)
even if consequences not transformative
Some ‘riots’ are more ‘political’ than others (e.g. Paris 1968 vs. 2005)
Facts and Figures
- Sat 6th- Wed 10th August 2011
- Tottenham- killing of Mark Duggan, discontent with the response- spread wide over next
nights
- Loss of police control
- Fluid, flowing and fast moving (new media)
- Looting, theft, arson, ‘public disorder’
£200-300m damage; 3 deaths; more injuries
5175 offences recorded by the police
Approx. 4,000 people arrested by early sept.
Immediate custody to 331 by oct. 12
Competing Narratives
- Immediate reaction from the government:
o Gang related (subsequently disproved)
o Sheer criminality
- Immediate reaction from ‘the left’
o Links made to withdrawal of Education Maintenance Allowance; cuts and closure of
youth services; youth underemployment and lack of opportunity
- Media representations
o Anarchy, ‘feral youth’, spectre of inner-city criminality threatening ‘decent society’
o Typical divides in British media landscape with Guardian running a criminological
‘reading the riots’ project
Understanding the 2011 disorder
What is a riot?
- Typically ‘outburst’ (not planned), involving relatively indiscriminate property damage, in
reaction to perceived grievance
- Typically involving marginalised populations
- Rule of law and policing authorities effectively suspended
- Rarely redresses grievances
- All too often in oppression rather than progression
- Powder-keg & tinderbox model (Abrams and Hogg, 2002)
- Modern urban riot as assertion of rule of the street vs. rule of the hated police (Ilan, 2015)
even if consequences not transformative
Some ‘riots’ are more ‘political’ than others (e.g. Paris 1968 vs. 2005)
Facts and Figures
- Sat 6th- Wed 10th August 2011
- Tottenham- killing of Mark Duggan, discontent with the response- spread wide over next
nights
- Loss of police control
- Fluid, flowing and fast moving (new media)
- Looting, theft, arson, ‘public disorder’
£200-300m damage; 3 deaths; more injuries
5175 offences recorded by the police
Approx. 4,000 people arrested by early sept.
Immediate custody to 331 by oct. 12
Competing Narratives
- Immediate reaction from the government:
o Gang related (subsequently disproved)
o Sheer criminality
- Immediate reaction from ‘the left’
o Links made to withdrawal of Education Maintenance Allowance; cuts and closure of
youth services; youth underemployment and lack of opportunity
- Media representations
o Anarchy, ‘feral youth’, spectre of inner-city criminality threatening ‘decent society’
o Typical divides in British media landscape with Guardian running a criminological
‘reading the riots’ project
