The London Riots Revisted

     I wanted to revisit an earlier post of mine: A Predictable Mess. Essentially, I was tying together the rising income inequality and austerity in Britain to the London Riots. Two articles in the Guardian aroused my interest. First was this piece: England Rioters: Young, Poor and Unemployed. Which has some interesting information on the demographics of the rioters (as suggested by the headline). Of worth was the following:

"A Liverpool University urban planning lecturer, Alex Singleton, analysed the Guardian's preliminary data by overlaying the addresses of defendants with the poverty indicators mapped by England's Indices of Multiple Deprivation, which breaks the country into small geographical areas.

   He found that the majority of people who have appeared in court live in poor neighbourhoods, with 41% of suspects living in one of the top 10% of most deprived places in the country. The data also shows that 66% of neighbourhoods where the accused live got poorer between 2007 and 2010."

Another article: England's rioters: did many 'pillars of the community' take part? has perhaps the most shocking statistic:

"Only a small proportion of people appearing in court charged with offences committed during the riots are listed as being in work or in full-time education, according to an analysis of most of the defendants whose cases have been heard so far. Research carried out by the Guardian of around 1,000 cases going through the magistrates courts shows that just 8.6% of defendants have jobs or are students." [Emphasis mine]


Meanwhile, as Cameron talks of 'zero tolerance', it would be useful to check some of the research on this question. I refer the reader to one paper Redistribution and Civil Unrest.

Abstract:

"Recurrent episodes of civil unrest significantly reduce the potential for economic growth and poverty reduction. Yet the economics literature offers little understanding on what triggers social unrest and how to prevent it. We analyse theoretically the merits of redistributive policies in the onset and reduction of civil unrest and compare it with more direct policies such as the use of police. We present empirical evidence for a panel of Indian states, where conflict, redistributive policies and policing are treated as endogenous variables. Our empirical results show, in the medium-term, redistributive policies are an effective means to reduce civil unrest, as they affect directly important causes of social conflict, notably poverty. Policing is at best a short-term strategy. In the long-term, it may trigger further social discontent."

It seems we never learn....or at least the Conservatives don't.....assuming, that is, they genuinely want to solve the problems.