England Riots: Independent Panel's Final Verdict

You could be forgiven for thinking that the same report into last summer's "England riots" keeps getting re-published over and over again.

Such are the similarities of the conclusions being made that this would be an understandable mistake to make.

This week saw the publication of the final report by the Riots Communities and Victims Panel; an independent group of experts brought together by the government to look into the causes of last August's disturbances.

The report finds a whole range of reasons for the rioting, and comes up with a hotchpotch of recommendations, some of which could be best described as a little fuzzy, and had me wondering whether they had their priorities right.

"When people feel they have no reason to stay out of trouble, the consequences can be devastating."

If policymakers had to take on board just one sentence from this report, it would be this one.

The moral lecturing, stern words, and promise of stiff prison sentences, will have little impact when someone has reached a stage in their life when they feel they have nothing to lose by breaking the law.

As Camila Batmanghelidjh said last summer, many of the people caught up in the riots live according to "parallel antisocial communities with different rules...a subculture."

It is with this in mind that the panel called for everyone 'to be given a stake in society.' A society where its different components are working together. Where the police, schools, local authorities and voluntary groups work in tandem.

Similarly to a report last November commissioned on behalf of the Cabinet Office, the panel found significant discontent with the police as a driving factor behind the riots.

If this was the rioters' catalyst, to get one up on 'the law,' according to communities affected by the trouble, a number of other important factors contributed:

"...a lack of opportunities for young people; perceptions about poor parenting and a lack of shared values; an inability to prevent re-offending [and] concerns about brands and materialism..."

Frustrations were expressed that public services simply weren't doing enough to tackle any of these issues.

"We have found that it is too easy at every stage of their lives for troubled individuals and forgotten families to fall through the gaps of public service provision.

"They often have multiple issues, which no single agency can resolve."

In response, the panel has issued a series of recommendations. The most noteworthy of which include:

- better early intervention for 'forgotten families [who] bump along the bottom of society'

- financial penalties imposed on schools for every pupil leaving school without the appropriate levels of literacy, with schools covering the cost when they find a 'new provider'

- schools to work on pupils' 'self confidence' by 'building character,' in an acknowledgement that not all parents are good at instilling 'positive attitudes and behaviour.' This would certainly come under the 'fuzzy', 'wishy-washy' category

- better work opportunities for young people, with a 'job guarantee scheme' for those out of work for two years or more, and

- alternatives to prison for young people, and mentoring for those who have been to prison with 'wraparound support.

I want to explore a couple of these in more detail.

Whilst the panel has its 'red lines,' it is clear that some require more urgency than others.

It is a little concerning that the sections covering the role of school devote far more time to talking about the importance of 'character building' and 'personal resilience,' (nine pages) than looking at educational attainment (one page):

"It is easy to write off concepts such as 'character' and 'personal and social development' as an unnecessary and burdensome distraction for public services...However the panel believes it is important that this issue is not side-lined."

Surely, getting the basics right should be the overriding priority of schools?

Especially, when the report found that only one in ten rioters achieved five GCSEs grades A*-C.

We know from earlier research, that the report cites (see page 33) that poor attainment at school can lead to a whole cycle of problems. Only two per cent of those who achieved five GCSEs at grades A*-C are NEET (not in education, employment of training) a year later, compared to 36 per cent of those who leave with no qualifications at all.

The panel's findings pointed out the link between rioting and deprivation:

"Our unique analysis shows that 70 per cent of those brought before the courts were living in the 30 per cent most deprived postcodes in the country."

They went on to show that of the 10-17 year olds caught up in the trouble (26 per cent), 46 per cent were defined as 'living in poverty,' 66 per cent had special educational needs and 42 per cent were claiming free school meals. Against national averages of 12, 21 and 16 per cent, respectively.

The link between poverty and lack of educational achievement has been well documented, and is tackled in rigorous detail by a 2010 study carried out by the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce).

It found that:

"By the age of three, poor children have been assessed to be one year behind richer ones in terms of communication, and in some disadvantaged areas, up to 50% of children begin primary school without the necessary language or communication skills."

And these educational inequalities only widen over time:

"Using free school meals as the best available indicator of socio-economic background, statistics show that at Key Stage 2, 53.5% of pupils eligible for free school meals reach the expected level (i.e. level 4 or above) in English and mathematics, compared with 75.5% of pupils who are not eligible.

"Furthermore, these children are more likely to attend the lowest-performing schools in deprived areas."

Which probably tells you something about Oftsed inspections, considering the panel's report found that schools where the rioters came from had been, on average, rated by Ofsted as 'good' (see page 60).

When it comes to GCSEs, figures released last month, revealed that just over a third of teenagers from deprived backgrounds left school with five good GSCEs, compared with 58% nationally.

It would therefore have been preferable for the riots panel to have spent rather more time on educational attainment and how crucial an escape route it can be for those from poorer backgrounds (i.e. the rioters), than putting more energy into nebulous concepts such as 'character building' and 'personal development.'

One follows the other no doubt.

Where the report is strongest is in its call for better early support for 'troubled families.' It is here that it tries to deal with one of the issues that most cropped up during its Neighbourhood Survey: poor parenting.

Whilst this is an area of most contention for many on the right (unsurprisingly, The Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail attributed it to be the leading cause of the riots) it is also one of the hardest to pin down:

"There are no data available to enable us to assess whether there is any link between the quality of parenting and the likelihood of an individual being involved in the riots. However, we do know that being abused or neglected as a child increases the likelihood of arrest as a juvenile by 59 per cent."

Instead, the panel focused its attentions on the government's Troubled Families Programme (TFP), which it supports, but found little relation between the TFP and the rioters' families:

"In a poll of 80 local authorities conduced by the Panel, only five per cent felt there was a great deal of overlap between the troubled families and rioter families."

Extending early intervention schemes to cover 500,000 families, rather than the TFP's 120,000 target, and getting disparate bodies to exchange information, are seen as two key areas to address:

"We recommend that providers work together and plan services around forgotten families, rather than focusing on individuals.

"State agencies dealing with the same families do not tell each other what they know or what they are doing, wasting time and money. We recommend the creation of a legal presumption to share data across local agencies."

Plenty of familiar findings for the government to digest no doubt.

As always, the question of whether similar events occur again depends partly on how much ministers are prepared to listen.

Are they able to put populist bluster - demanding harsh (disproportionate) prison sentences and lazily blaming 'broken Britain' -to one side, and engage with the experts and those affected by last summer's events?

Or do we continue with the usual cycle of criminality, followed by tough rhetoric, half-hearted solutions, diluted at the first whiff of anger by a right wing press baron?

I think we already know the answer.

This article was first published by Left Foot Forward on Sunday 1 April 2012

Riots Analysis

Yet another detailed report out this week, blaming anger and frustration at the police, as a principal cause for this summer's England riots.

Many of the findings echo previous studies released over the past few months, to which I have commented on in earlier posts.

In collaboration with the LSE, The Guardian published its much awaited Reading the Riots report.

They interviewed 270 people who had rioted in cities such as London, Birmingham and Manchester. Opportunism, surprise surprise, drove much of the looting.

Gang rivalry had been suspended during this unique period, social media had played little role in organising the disturbances, making a mockery of once-proposed, but since discarded government plans, to shut down sites such as Facebook and Twitter to suspected rioters during times of civil unrest.

Their demographic make up findings revealed nothing new: overwhelmingly male, young, many unemployed.

Resentment at perceived harassment by the police, in the form of the much despised stop and search, formed much of their anger at the police, with 73% being stop and searched in the last year, 8 times more likely than the rest of the population in London.

Most worryingly, a large majority thought the riots would happen again, with one in three saying they'd be involved if they did.

No new revelations, but more food for thought for our politicians. Unsurprisingly, they're still unable to look past prison and gang crackdowns. Long term solutions make bad politics but good policy. As always, they're happy to settle with the former.

The Police Response and The England Riots

Another week, another report surrounding the England Riots enters the public domain. Common themes begin to materialise, facts and figures converge.

The latest, out this week, saw the publication of 5 Days in August, an interim study commissioned by the government.

This saw the setting up of the “Riots Communities and Victims Panel,” and sought to address such things as: why the riots took place, why some areas remained trouble-free whilst others around them erupted, and what measures could have been taken to prevent and manage the disturbances.

Many of the conclusions will be familiar to those who have read the recent independent study undertaken on behalf of the Cabinet Office and which I have already written about.

Those in attendance in the affected areas were a disparate bunch: some part of organised criminal groups, some who had purposely travelled to riot sites in order to loot, the ‘late night shoppers’ as they’re called, but many were opportunistic, caught up in ‘moments of madness.’

The demographics of the rioters, unsurprisingly, also echo the Home Office and Ministry of Justice’s statistical findings. The panel estimates that between 13,000 and 15,000 people took part, with over 4,000 of them arrested. They were overwhelmingly male, mostly under 24, with previous convictions, but not gang members.

Of the children brought before the courts: two-thirds had Special Educational Needs, they were more likely to come from the most deprived areas, and therefore be in receipt of free school meals.

However, it is in its criticism of the police that this latest study differs.

From the very start, the actions of the police were found wanting. Firstly, in their levels of communication with the family of Mark Duggan, the man shot dead by police in Tottenham, which then sparked off the unrest.

Despite rumours circulating over the circumstances surrounding Mark Duggan’s death, family members came up against an ‘information vacuum’ from the police, who had failed to act upon Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPPC) recommendations when faced with such events.

As the report says:

“This was set against a historic backdrop of antipathy between some members of the black community and the police; some felt that these underlying tensions in the community had been rising for some time.”

Most damningly, when it came to the riots itself, the report found that:

“The vast majority of people we spoke to believed that the sole trigger for disturbances in their areas was the perception that the police could not contain the scale of rioting in Tottenham and then across London.

Lack of confidence in the police response to the initial riots encouraged people to test reactions in other areas... Rioters believed they would be able to loot and damage without being challenged by the police. In the hardest hit areas, they were correct.”

Even before the release of this week’s interim report, we heard from Peter Fahy, the chief constable of Greater Manchester police, claiming that had the Met Police managed to contain and quickly stamp out the rioting, it would never have spread to Manchester.

People saw rioters in London ‘getting away with it,’ and that ‘the authorities weren’t in control,’ and so wanted to have their turn.

At the time, the government and the Metropolitan Police found themselves in a war of words over the handling of the trouble.

David Cameron used an emergency Commons debate to attack the police’s “insufficient” tactics and numbers during this week, whilst the Home Secretary, Theresa May, said that the public had lost confidence in them to take ‘clear and robust action in the face of open criminality.’

Predictably, the police defended themselves, rejecting criticism by people ‘who weren’t there.’

However, they have now recanted and admitted to mistakes being made, for which the PM can feel somewhat vindicated.

The insistence on persevering with the unpopular and discredited ‘stop and search’ tactic was highlighted by young black and Asian men in their motivations for being involved in the rioting; forming part of a much wider, general anger with the police. 

Whilst probably already known, it is worth repeating what the latest studies have shown: that black people are seven times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than their white counterparts, a figure which has risen in recent years.  They are also more than three times more likely to then be arrested.

And both black and Asian people are also more likely to be sent to prison for committing similar offences to white people.

Is it any wonder that so much resentment exists?

It is no surprise that the report recommends that ‘stop and search’ receive “immediate attention to ensure that community support and confidence is not undermined.”

Its author, Darra Singh, paints a depressing picture and warns of future riots unless urgent steps are taken: ‘…not only with the symptoms…but with the deep-seated causes of dissatisfaction beneath.’

We so often hear about the importance of community policing, built on consensus and fairness. This report illustrates just how important.


This article was published by Left Foot Forward on Sunday 4 December 2011

Young People and The England Riots

Back in August, little more than 24 hours after calm had finally descended on our chaotic and debris-filled streets, I wrote that it was perfectly reasonable to believe that opportunism and copycat criminal activity could be blamed for fuelling the rioters, looters and other troublemakers.

I also remarked that whilst this may have helped provide us with an initial explanation, this would never satisfy in terms of seeking out long term and lasting solutions. A complete picture as to who the rioters were, and why they behaved as they did was needed.

The last few weeks have begun to shed some light, with the release of three separate reports, all offering an insight (and very often, an unsurprising one) behind what has become known as The England Riots. The focus on young people is most compelling.

The first and second reports came out towards the end of October: Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Home Office studies, released concurrently, which gave a statistical analysis of who the rioters were and exactly what crimes were committed.

Crucially, it delves into their socio-economic backgrounds, with a glance at educational attainment and past criminal activity. I will return to both of these reports later.

The third, published last week, was a government-funded one, carried out by a group of independent researchers and commissioned on behalf of the Cabinet Office. It is this one that I’ll deal with first.

The study sought, as its main premise, to understand why some young people got involved in the trouble, whilst at the same time investigating why others chose not to.

Statistics have already revealed that half of those caught up in the riots were under-20, with just over a quarter of those between the ages of 10 and 17.

Taken from an admittedly small sample of just 206 young people from the affected areas, of which only 50 were actively involved in the disturbances, it found that a cocktail of excitement and opportunism, together with a desire to get back at the police, drove the disorder.

The researchers speak of ‘moments of madness,’ and ‘a day like no other, when normal rules did not seem to apply.’ Some of the young people described the thrill and the buzz of what took place as being akin to a rave.

This was a chance to get their hands on “free stuff;” the materially inaccessible and out of reach kind of stuff. Witnessing the events on TV, online, egged on by friends/associates via social media, brought many in from being mere ‘watchers, bystanders,’ to active ‘looters.’

Opportunism, thus, played its part, no doubt with the view that many felt they could get away with it, thanks in no small part to the images circulating of the police in certain areas, in cordons, standing and observing, rather than intervening.

A series of ‘nudge’ and ‘tug’ factors were found to determine young peoples’ level of involvement.

Those quizzed referred to being bored, with ‘nothing else to do,’ as a ‘nudge’ factor, with previous negative experiences of the police a significant one. In fact, hostility towards authority figures in general was regularly cited.

 ‘Tug’ factors such as peer and family pressure played their part:

“The strength of parents as inhibitors depended to some extend on whether they were around or not...and on the degree of their control.”

A young person’s criminal past acted both as a motivator and a deterrent. Current education, future job prospects and aspirations also came into play. With youth unemployment at 21.3%, the highest since records began, and well over double the overall national rate, many were right to wonder what kind of future lay ahead.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, that the findings showed that:

“...some young people felt that their prospects were so bleak that they had little to lose by their involvement.”

As opposed to this young person from Peckham who chose to stay away:

“I was inside planning my future. I couldn’t see myself out there. It was stupid.”

A wake up call for our politicians if ever there was one.

The Ministry of Justice report was concerned with providing data and information regarding all the perpetrators brought before the courts, whereas the Home Office one relied on police data of all those arrested, as well as detailed accounts of crimes committed. Both were released a couple of weeks before, and serve to compliment one another.

In short, their scope was more interested in the who, rather than the why. They are, however, no less revealing.

Correct up until 12^th October, the Ministry of Justice found that of the 1,984 people who had appeared in court, 90% were male, with 26% being juveniles (aged 10-17), up from 16% for similar offences in 2010. Only 5% were over 40.

In terms of criminal pasts, 76% of those who appeared before the courts for the disorder had either a previous caution or conviction; 62% for juveniles. Yet, almost a quarter of all offenders in court had no previous caution or conviction, thus lending credence to the view that a lot of the rioting and looting came from opportunists, rather than experienced, prolific criminals.

It is only by wading through the socio-economic and educational data that one sees a picture of poverty and deprivation, combined with academic failure. Almost two-thirds of 10-17 year olds up in court lived in one of the 20% of the country’s most deprived areas.

The MoJ was unequivocal in its findings that:

“...compared to population averages, those brought before the courts were more likely to be in receipt of Free School meals or benefits, were more likely to have had special educational needs and be absent from school, and more likely to have some form of criminal history. This pattern held across all areas looked at.”

Overall, a pretty gloomy picture.

Whilst the Home Office produced a ‘sub-set’ of those arrested, reproducing similar figures to the MoJ, it found something additionally noteworthy. Only 13% were found to be affiliated to a gang, thus punctuating the gang myth propagated by Iain Duncan Smith at September’s Tory party conference, where he told delegates that gangs ‘played a significant part’ in the riots.

Not the first time (and it certainly won’t be the last) a government minister has jumped the gun, reaching for conclusions before all the facts are known.

The conclusion of all three reports should surprise few. The responses from young people as to why they rioted don’t reveal anything particularly new or groundbreaking.

Instead, they build upon much that has already been known about from earlier studies. The high-profile nature of August’s events meant that they carried even greater weight.

Yes, we know that opportunism, thuggery, mindless violence, took place on our streets, but past studies show that these things don’t just operate in a vacuum. The Cabinet Office report gives yet a further example of the simmering tension, anger, and frustrations at the lack of opportunities felt by the young.

For some, the riots were a release, no matter how opportunistic.

Many of those convicted of looting and handling stolen goods have received far stiffer punishments than normal, both in terms of going to prison and length of service being handed down. This was particularly the case for juveniles.

Short-termism and populist headlines still dominate government thinking.

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, an independent charity which believes that prison should be reserved for only the most serious offenders, argued that while the reports’ figures were to be expected, they also showed that now was the time to tackle social deprivation.

Indiscriminate prison sentences were only going to be counter-productive:

“The worst possible outcome would be just to sling all these young people in prison and risk their joining gangs out of terror and becoming hardened criminals."

Unfortunately, nobody in the government was listening.


This article was first published by Left Foot Forward on Thursday 10 November 2011

The England Riots

They have rioted, trashed, looted, burnt and brought havoc to our cities’ streets. They have intimidated and terrified local residents. They have also attacked my liberal sensibilities. How do you watch and read about the scenes over the last few days without feeling nothing short of utter revulsion and anger towards the perpetrators?

How do you watch masked and unmasked youths (and adults in some cases) taunting the police, brazenly raiding shops and then casually walking off, cradling the stolen goods, in full view of the authorities and the media, and not scream at the TV, at your computer screens, hoping someone grabs one of them and does their very worst?

I have felt all of these things as events have unfolded since Saturday's unrest in Tottenham, which now seems an age ago. Liberal sensibilities indeed. 

And I make no apologies. I believe they are a perfectly natural and emotional response to what has taken place. How can you feel anything but enormous sympathy for local people who have been made homeless, or those who have seen their businesses and livelihoods destroyed?

The kind of people interviewed on TV, many of them second or third generation immigrants, who talk about coming to this country, opening up a shop, doing 14 hour days, 7 days a week, only to see everything they have worked for so cruelly taken away.

Predictably, we have the divide between those who just want to condemn outright, and then punish all those behind these riots, and those (currently a small minority if comment pieces and blogs are anything to go by) who want us to look past the usual hyperbole and outrage and start addressing the reasons behind such behaviour.

Some have argued that it is “authoritarian” to blame the consumerist-I want it quick and I want it now and I don’t want to have to work for it-culture, or to blame our soft criminal justice system which fails to penalise persistent offenders.

Yet there are many people who subscribe to this position who will take issue with this label and say they are anything but.

As always the issue of parenting, or lack of, crops up. Whilst watching the scenes on TV you could have been forgiven for asking yourself whether these kids’ parents knew, or even cared, where their children were.

Debates over the quality of modern day parenting have been raging for years, so much so that something that was first mentioned during Labour’s time in office, was mooted once again, with the release of a report last year by the former Labour minister, Frank Field, and his suggestions that all new parents should have to take parenting classes.

The notion of the absent father is also nothing new, with various commentators wondering whether the enormous number of single parent families in areas such as Tottenham can be explained as a factor.

This is particularly the case in the Afro-Caribbean community, with previous government ministers blaming it in helping to fuel gang crime, and even Barack Obama, before he became president, using a Father’s Day speech to be critical of dads who abrogated their responsibilities.

Many will call for prison sentences for each and every protagonist, but with reoffending rates at 74% for young offenders only a year after leaving prison, this merely papers over the cracks, keeps the populist media happy and works as a very short term solution.

The obvious disregard the youths have for the police highlights the lack of respect for authority that many, not just on the right, lament. The sight of them openly mocking the police, whilst at times seeming able to loot with impunity, is one of the things that will justifiably have had people fuming.

If their parents can’t control them, and the police won’t intervene, what does this say about the kind of society we live in?

This brings us to old-fashioned (which doesn’t necessarily mean bad) calls for a return to community peer pressure, or (god help me) a taste of The Big Society. A return to an age where people could be publically shamed or reprimanded without fear of recourse. Try and do something like that now and you’ll probably be on the end of a barrage of verbal abuse or even worse, whilst people around you, rather than supporting you, will twitch awkwardly and look the other way.

But, this is the kind of thing that seems long gone, unless you’re this brave woman, filmed having a go at a group of rioters in Hackney.

Before we address the ‘why’ questions, it is also not beyond the realms of possibility that all we witnessed were a bunch of opportunistic thugs, indulging in a spot of late afternoon/evening copycat criminal activity. Nothing more, nothing less.

Groups of fearless teenagers breaking into shops and stealing because they could, knowing that if they ever went up before the courts, they’d either get a slap on the wrist in the form of light community service or a fine, which they couldn’t afford to pay, anyway.

And you know what, these arguments seem pretty plausible to me. You can blame government cuts, poverty, deprivation and alienation all you want, but sometimes the simple explanation might be the best. They wanted a night out rioting, the notoriety, and the chance to get on YouTube.

The trouble is this only gets you so far. Once all of this has blown over, we really have got to deal with some rather important issues.

Camila Batmanghelidjh, who has spent well over a decade dealing with thousands of the same kind of young people who have caused mayhem on our streets, speaks of "parallel antisocial communities with different rules,” and a survival of the fittest ‘subculture.’

In opposition, Iain Duncan Smith spent time looking into the reasons behind such things as educational failure and unemployment in certain communities up and down the country. He pointed to the almost doubling of the prison population as evidence that the government had failed to "tackle the social breakdown within which crime thrives."

Time and again our politicians have sought to tackle the causes of crime, but at the first mutterings from the right wing press, have reverted to type, and promised to build more prisons and called for tougher sentencing.

Prophetically, one government cut that was predicted to have disastrous consequences, were the ones to youth services. Last year, Sir Paul Ennals, the head of the National Children’s Bureau’ charity, warned of the possibility of social unrest, believing it could mean "young people become progressively disengaged from their own communities."

Whether this can be partly blamed on the disturbances is hard to prove. But, the more activities that exist to keep our hyperactive young occupied can only be a positive thing.

We are regularly told that our young are miserable, poorly educated and feel neglected. Report after report suggests that society has been ignoring all the warning signs and has instead concentrated on getting richer, whilst the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ has widened to record levels.  

Whether you agree with some of these explanations or not doesn’t really matter. Events are still raw – this may go on for a few days yet – and the public will clearly not be ready to listen to the ‘why’ arguments. Heck, my Facebook page and tweets have been filled with all manner of rantings and ravings against the rioters.

But, the need to start to look at the bigger picture must happen soon, and it is this belief that I guess makes me a liberal.

This article was first published by Left Foot Forward on Thursday 11 August 2011