The riots that engulfed London and other cities in England began one year ago today. Just to hark back to my piece ‘Riots: Looking Deeper’ on this topic last year, written one week after they started. I think it’s fair to say that it was a reasonable analysis. In particular the Independent Panel set up to investigate their causes stated
Clearly the importance of those attributes becomes even more pronouncedwhen young people are faced with growing up in a time of austerity, a struggling job market and pervasive messaging telling them that criminality provides a fast track to achieving status among their peers. For example, while we know that most convicted rioters were not gang members, we also know that gangs operate in a large number of areas where the riots occurred. Some young people are exposed to imagery and attitudes associated with gang culture from an early age, which glamorise a life of criminality outside the system and which eschews any empathy for the victims of crime.
An article by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (of ‘The Spirit Level’ fame) on today’s Guardian CiF specifically blames inequality. You might care to look here at my general response to that thesis.
As Laura Wilkes, Policy Manager at the Local Government Information Unit, points out today on LabourList
…with local authority cuts set to continue the environment will become more challenging than ever before – if we are to avoid a repeat of 2011 councils need to have the funding to invest in key intervention programmes, community development and economic growth; all things that could help to prevent future riots. As things currently stand, government policy could threaten this.