All social actions have a context and an agency. If this seems like a good explaination to you Sunny then fine. The question is, would this have happened 10 years ago , 20 years ago etc. Why would youth want to get back at Police now for example? The is a wider context to this and it is not necessarily reducible to ‘moments of madness’.

The report is pretty good, given the fairly short period that has elapsed, though I think the main methodological problem is that interviews with people who actually involved themselves in the riots (and ‘involvement’ is rightly a contested notion) are largely restricted to people who now find themsevles in custody. The Guardian/LSE report, based on 200+ people who were were ‘properly’ involved in the rioting, but who mostly do not find themselves now in prison, should complement this research well. It is due for release 14th December (Sunny, you should look to attend the conference at the LSE).

Overall though, I think the report by NatCen makes sense. Actually, more striking than the ‘moment of madness’ headline is this:

“When asked to explain their individual decisions, it became apparent that young people were asking themselves two questions. The first was a fundamental manifestation of the values of young people: their beliefs about what was right and wrong, and about “respect”.The second was a more pragmatic assessment of risks and benefits – what are the chances of getting caught in these particular circumstances and how far are those risks offset by the gains of involvement.”

The report doesn’t attempt policy implications or recommendations, as that was not its brief – the report goes to ministers as a package, with other work, in the spring to ministers. But if we do thing forward to what needs to be done, I think the second decision making factor is most important, because teaching right from wrong doesn’t just happen. Essentially the message is that the benefits of not getting involved in future must outweigh the benefits of getting involved, since clearly attempts to up the risk of getting caught don’t work fully when policing by consensus breaks down. That means dull stuff for this govt like investing in young people’s lives, so that they get their thrills/satisfaction in ways other than from looting and smashing.

Incidentally, this is pretty well the interpretation I have on the first night of the riots, ‘cos I understand stuff and should be a SpAd or something:

“We can, ultimately, establish no single motivation, and it is useless to try. It just makes you sound like Theresa May.

What we can say, though, is something about comparative incentives.

Most people from richer areas, who have jobs or who have a good chance of getting a good job, will not riot in the next day or few because their retaining their job or job chance through not getting a criminal record is greater than any of the other incentives I have listed above.

It’s as simple as that.

People from poorer, more deprived areas and backgrounds are rioting for different, shifting motivations, but they are doing so because they do not have enough invested in what the state can offer them to outweigh the benefits of that rioting.

That is, the state has temporarily failed, because a significant group of people in London have decided it is just not worth living within its jurisdiction.”
http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2011/08/08/rational-choice-rioting/

“And lastly, doesn’t the ‘poverty -> riots’ theory also assume poor people are more prone to crime?”

Poor people are more prone to crime – or at least the kind of crime that the police like to talk about, and can be measured from their figures.

But that is down to the structural conditions of being poor – deprivation, more police attention, people less willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, higher likelihood of being trapped in the poverty cycle – it doesn’t do anyone any favours to deny that those structural conditions exist.

It should be clear that, rather than contradicting them, the analytically useless, question-begging “moment of madness” explanation is consistent with all of the other explanations.

It’s not that there is no simple explanation, it’s that your robot overlords want you to know that there is no explanation. It simply happened, then it stopped, like period of bad weather. Don’t try to understand it, and don’t talk about it. There’s nothing to see here, now move along please.

I had a good idea on the monday afternoon that Croydon was a place where there could be rioting, and I knew where it would start too. On London Road around West Croydon railway station. Because I come from there, I just felt that the conditions were right. The people and the location. The fact that it’s such a shopping, transport and ”hang out” hub to so many people. And they could gather on London Road and then test how well the town centre was being policed, but with easy get-aways down side streets to a housing estate.
And while the police protected the town centre, they left all the dozens of small, mostly Asian run businesses on London Road at the mercy of the looters.
And you could have guessed that might happen that way.
It wasn’t a moment of madness. It would have taken all day and the previous day to build, with people coming from all over the sorrounding area to join in.
It was a happening. An event. Something that you were either at or you weren’t.
The most exciting thing for years, so who wouldn’t want to have a piece of that action? For some young people (I guess) it was one of those ”be there – or be square” moments. They’re still talking about it now I bet.

@5 – There’s still a flame which lights the fuse. And which in this case has gone unpunished because it was the police’s hand holding the flame.

I think a moment of madness is a good partial explanation – but you’re right, the cause isn’t simple. Not only will the explanation differ from rioter to rioter, but many individuals will have had several motivations for breaking the law.

“And lastly, doesn’t the ‘poverty -> riots’ theory also assume poor people are more prone to crime?”

Isn’t that statistically true? (Or, to be perfectly accurate, poor people are more likely to commit crime that then gets found out about.) If poor people are more likely to commit crim than affluent/rich people, you shouldn’t ignore that fact just because you find it upsetting.

And it’s not so much a comment about the people themselves as it is a reflection of socioeconomic variables anyway. Poor people have more of a motive to commit crime, and are less likely (this is a guess) to grow up believing that they have a realistic opportunity to get what they want through legal channels.

@6 Yep, funny how the OP makes no mention of Mark Duggan. Would we have seen riots had he not died at the police’s hands, followed by contempt for his family, and a piss-poor cover up? Not to mention the assault on the 16 year old girl by the police at his vigil.
No, we wouldn’t. Quite why everyone seems more concerned with why the riots spread and sustained themselves rather than what kicked it all off in the first place is beyond me. You might as well ask why that fire burning over there keeps catching onto tinder.

Cylux – Mark Duggan died because he was running about with a gun.
Maybe the police were a bit trigger happy, but if you want to live the ”thug life” you have to accept that you might get killed. Remember ”Get rich or die trying” is the motto of the street gangstas.

This was some of them just last night.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-15587402

@9 – And that excuses the police lighting the spark by keeping the family waiting for hours to speak to a senior officer, when it was a known powder keg situation becuase? It excuses the mob violence shown to a mouthy teenage girl by the gang otherwise known as the police because?

I think the police have the right not to want to engage with the ”No justice – no peace” brigade when they turn up outside a police station. Maybe they should have told a couple of family members to visit a police station for a discussion about what had happened – but how much they can say so soon after someone is killed I don’t know. With family demanding answers there may be many they couldn’t answer.

Was the gun in the guy’s hand, had he fired it? Was it still in a sock and hadn’t been shown? I don’t know if the police would have had all those answers right then.
But the ”angry black community” politics that is pushed by the likes of Lee Jasper has to take part of the blame for the riots.
And the culture of low expectations and ”therapeutic alienation” that is so prevalent in places like Tottenham.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=john+mcwhorter+therapeutic+alienation&go=&qs=n&sk=&form=QBRE&filt=all

@9 Very good Damon, now where in my comment did I actually bother to address that point? We’re talking about the riots, and their cause, how does “well he had it coming anyway” have any bearing on this specific point?

Cylux, it’s hard talking about complicated stuff on these internet forums – especially when there are lazy assumptions commonly held. If you raise Mark Duggan then you (one) really have to go right through that side of the story, or leave it to one side as it will take the thread off topic. I never said that Duggan ”had it coming” – but if he was carrying a gun, then he was an armed criminal, and the world over, the police carry guns to use against people like that. It can easily end badly. Some police forces are better than others.
Ours aren’t the greatest, but they’re a lot better then many. The real issue was though that Duggan had a gun. And because of that, his family and friends should really sit tight and wait for any inquirey.
This kind of street politics has a lot to answer for. It’s more a kind of street theatre.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=justice+for+smiley+culture&aq=f

But what happened in Croydon and Woolwich was not much to do with what happened with Duggan. And the rioting in Salford was different in it’s own way to Croydon.
As it was different again to why some rioting occured in Gloucester.

But one thing not to be overlooked – rioting can be terribly exciting.
This was in Belfast a few weeks before the English riots.
They do it because they enjoy it.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ardoyne+riots+2011&aq=0&oq=ardoy

I was at some riots myself in east Belfast in June. It was ritualistic, and people drove their cars down to where the rioting had been the night before. Parked up a couple of hundred yards up the road, walked down and stood about waiting for the kids to kick off.
Which they duely did. Jumping all over the police landrovers and throwing betrol bombs.
The adults and other teenagers stood back watching, and commenting on the bravado of the young men from their community, attacking the police and throwing stuff towards the catholic houses again. Spectators and cheerleaders.

@13

But what happened in Croydon and Woolwich was not much to do with what happened with Duggan. And the rioting in Salford was different in it’s own way to Croydon.

That my friend was the point being made @6 by Leon flying WAY over your head.

Do you believe that had Mark not been killed by the police, and the police had not behaved as they did afterwards, and that there was no vigil for Mr Duggan where it all kicked off – that there would still have been a riot in Manchester on the 9th of August?

The idea that scores of kids were out in Manchester town centre setting fire to Selfridges and looting Footlocker because some random guy got shot in an altercation with the police hundreds of miles away is almost as ridiculous as (my personal favourite) blaming it on the closure of some youth clubs in Haringey.

@ 15

Depends what you mean by “because”, really. Remove the shooting in London as a causative factor and the riots would not have happened – but no, that wasn’t their motivation for breaking the law. What happened in Manchester (as in London, at least after the first night) was immature copycat behaviour aimed at causing trouble for the fun of it and nicking some stuff into the bargain.

@16 We have a winner!
Yes, the riots in Manchester were inspired by the riots the day before, and those were inspired by the riots from the day before then – and where does this chain terminate?
At the first riot which was over Mark Duggan’s killing, where the consent to maintain law and order was retracted.

While some think it’s a worthwhile question asking why large-enough groups of people far removed from the original spark decided to follow suit, I regard it more as wondering why the horse is still running around the field after it has already bolted.

@ 17 Cylux

Well, riots don’t always spread like that, and I have to admit that I found it a bit bewildering considering there was no unifying cause (“cause” in the sense of a philosophy, not as in cause and effect). I don’t know if the copycat riots started out of sympathy with the original riots, but they certainly didn’t seem to end that way.

I think they’re both good questions: why did these riots start (that question’s answered, to an extent) and why did they spread?

When a nation ends up rioting because a gun-carrying gang member man whose uncles are thought to be responsible for up to 25 murders in Manchester gets shot by police in the street, then we really are in trouble

It would be nice if we got that angry when the good people got killed

17. Cylux,

In other words, the riots had no cause at all (beyond some proximate thing). You’ve got the same problem as the OP: the riots “just happened”.

@18 Well there’s many factors to consider, dry warm weather, the summer holidays providing plenty of idle time, an inescapeable televised demonstration of the limits of police power, a general underlying resentment among some portions of the population, criminals taking advantage of chaos, and it should be noted that the riots guttered out at the same time the weather became wet, cold and miserable.
Chances are, they spread because conditions were favourable to the spread of riots.

3. Ciaran Osborne

Poor people are more prone to crime – or at least the kind of crime that the police like to talk about, and can be measured from their figures.

Sorry but why do you think that? It could just be that people who are prone to crime are more likely to be poor. That the small group of persistent offenders from among crime prone communities hide in the larger group of poor people. This smacks of middle class prejudice to me.

But that is down to the structural conditions of being poor – deprivation, more police attention, people less willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, higher likelihood of being trapped in the poverty cycle – it doesn’t do anyone any favours to deny that those structural conditions exist.

Again, why do you believe this? This looks like rationalisation of a prior prejudice to me. How do you know? We know that crime is massively higher than it was and we know that crime affects some communities more than others. Poor non-Muslim Asians tend not to commit crime. They are often poor, but they do not produce criminals. Even though they suffer the same structural problems.

@20 Really? So by managing to identify several incidents which had they not happened would have led to no riots at all occurring, I’ve apparently made the claim of “the riots just happened”. Again, if you want to declare that the Manchester riots would have occurred anyway without the Police killing of Mark Duggan, please do so. This will have the unfortunate effect of making you look ridiculous however.

I would have thought you would at least be familiar with the concept of a chain reaction.

8. Cylux

Yep, funny how the OP makes no mention of Mark Duggan. Would we have seen riots had he not died at the police’s hands, followed by contempt for his family, and a piss-poor cover up? Not to mention the assault on the 16 year old girl by the police at his vigil. No, we wouldn’t.

I agree. His death was an occasion for the criminal classes to come out and show contempt for the police – which they did not respond to. But providing an occasion for a riot is not the same as providing a cause. This was not like the Race Riots of the 1980s where Trots had worked for years to stir up outrage in Afro-Caribbean communities. This was just some opportunistic thugs stealing in the face of police and community weakness. It could just as well have been a football match or a car accident, or as in America these days, no event at all.

Quite why everyone seems more concerned with why the riots spread and sustained themselves rather than what kicked it all off in the first place is beyond me.

I think a lot of people have been talking about why they kicked off in the first place – feral youth, spineless policing, a welfare culture of dependency and crime, a lack of respect for traditional values and the rest of the community, that sort of thing. One thing is certain – the police actions played no role whatsoever in causing these riots. Not the death of some thug. Not the “disrespect” shown to the family of said thugs. If anything it was the lack of police action that did it. They did not come down hard like a ton of bricks on the thugs who started and so everyone thought it was safe to loot. We will have to admit another British tradition is dead and arm police.

”Do you believe that had Mark not been killed by the police, and the police had not behaved as they did afterwards, and that there was no vigil for Mr Duggan where it all kicked off – that there would still have been a riot in Manchester on the 9th of August?”

No, the Duggan shooting is what sparked the riots. But my point was that it shouldn’t have. There was no justification for setting fire to businesses in Tottenham and attacking the police – and commiting random acts of violence on individuals too, because the police had shot a gun carrying crimimal.
I’m not saying the police were right to shoot him. They sometimes screw things up or are too trigger happy, but that will always happen when police face people with guns.
You can train firearms officers as much as you like, but you never know what’s going to happen when a situation actually takes place. The same in war and military battles.

Duggan was a mug for carrying a gun and there was no justification for any riots because of it. The real problem is why a place like Broadwater Farm has such endemic unemployment when there is pretty good public transport to take people to work anywhere in London.. Hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans have come in and taken jobs from right under their noses.

You might just as well ask why there was chronic football hooliganism in the 1970s.
There are plenty of hooligan books to tell you why they did it.
It was fun and they got a buzz out of it.

@ 21 Cylux

“Chances are, they spread because conditions were favourable to the spread of riots.”

Well, yes. Pretty much by definition.

@ 24

When you say we should arm police, I take it you mean guns? Do you really think firearms help in a riot situation? A few more dead bodies really help to calm things down and make people appreciate the powers that be, yes?

There are arguments for arming police; the use of guns in riots is not one of them.

Cylux,

Well, yes. It’s the same circular reasoning as the OP. The riots just happened because they happened–because some thing caused them to happen.

We all understand that the proximate cause of each successive iteration was that some other riot preceded it and so on up the chain to the original riot, but why did the riots happen, and not something else? Your explanation doesn’t actually explain that.

It’s like a grieving mother asking, Why oh why is my poor son dead, and you saying, Simple, really: loss of blood. Next!

@28

and so on up the chain to the original riot, but why did the riots happen, and not something else? Your explanation doesn’t actually explain that.

I’ll think you’ll find plenty of other things happened alongside further riots, the broom clean-up crew for example, mass condemnation of the riots, calls for water cannons to be deployed, calls to fuck the water cannons and just get the army in to shoot anyone in a hoodie, etc etc.
But again, we know the reason the first riot started, if you think there’s something worthwhile in examining why specifically the Manchester riot occurred, while refusing to accept the wider context of several days worth of similar riots in other major cities that led up to it, then by all means enlighten us all.

No, the Duggan shooting is what sparked the riots. But my point was that it shouldn’t have. There was no justification for setting fire to businesses in Tottenham and attacking the police – and commiting random acts of violence on individuals too, because the police had shot a gun carrying criminal.

He was a father too. So whether you agree with it or not, some people cared about him.
Plus, generally when you tell massive outright porkie pies about what went down*, you should really expect grieving people to be just a bit pissed off when they find out the truth, and their friends and neighbours to also be a bit pissed off, and that to then beat the shit out of a remonstrating 16 year-old unarmed and unprotected girl while in full riot gear in front of an increasingly pissed off crowd of people armed with phones to films your actions, you ain’t gonna have a happy ending.

*Recall that Mark had allegedly shot one of the coppers in the arm and was shot back in self defence, course then the truth came out that his gun was still very much tucked in his sock and friendly fire caused the policeman’s wound.

27. Chaise Guevara

When you say we should arm police, I take it you mean guns? Do you really think firearms help in a riot situation? A few more dead bodies really help to calm things down and make people appreciate the powers that be, yes?

Yes. I really mean a few dead bodies, early on, would calm the situation. Even in the US, where in the 1960s African-Americans lived under conditions of extreme provocation, riots took place in cities where the police tried to work with activists. Cities where people knew they would not be shot at. They did not take place where the oppression was worst. Presumably because people knew perfectly well what the response would be. Riots are a response to weakness. They may not make people like the police any more, but they prevent riots.

Cylux

But again, we know the reason the first riot started

You mean you think you do. It is highly politically contentious.

The Nixon administration knew how to deal with troublesome students:

The Kent State shootings—also known as the May 4 massacre or, frequently, the Kent State massacre — occurred at Kent State University in the city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

32. Bob B

The Nixon administration knew how to deal with troublesome students:

Umm, Bob, the Kent State shootings were carried out by the National Guard. Who did not come under the control of Nixon. They came under the authority of the Governor. Who was asked by the Mayor to provide them after students started smashing up the town, burning down buildings and attacking firemen who came to put out the fires. With bricks.

Nixon had nothing to do with it. Now I know facts have little to do with Leftist demonology, but really, Bob, you can’t do better than that?

(And of course it seems that it was panicked soldiers who fired briefly when they thought they were being attacked in this case, but, hey, facts? Who needs ‘em?)

@33: “Nixon had nothing to do with it”

Really? And Nixon never had a word over the phone with the Governor of Ohio at the time, James Rhodes, who was also a Republican?

C’mon. Nixon was infamous for his authorised but deniable actions.

34. Bob B

Really? And Nixon never had a word over the phone with the Governor of Ohio at the time, James Rhodes, who was also a Republican? C’mon. Nixon was infamous for his authorised but deniable actions.

Sure. It was all a conspiracy. Nixon was on the grassy knoll too. Not to mention behind the Lindburgh Baby case.

Pull yourself together Bob. There is no evidence of Nixon’s involvement. There is no evidence the Governor needed pushing. There is no evidence of any order from on high being given for the shooting. I could go on but it is pointless. You’re trolling.

@35: “Pull yourself together Bob. There is no evidence of Nixon’s involvement. ”

No surprise there. I rather lost count of exactly how many officials of the Nixon administration ended up in jail as the result of the Watergate break-in of the Democrat headquarters in 1972 to steal political papers so Nixon could be re-elected as President.

36. Bob B

No surprise there. I rather lost count of exactly how many officials of the Nixon administration ended up in jail as the result of the Watergate break-in of the Democrat headquarters in 1972 to steal political papers so Nixon could be re-elected as President.

I see. An interesting legal principle. Because Toerag A is guilty of Crime B he must also be guilty of Crimes C, D and the way through to Z. Very interesting.

@37:

After decades of searching archives, no historian has ever truned up with an order, signed by Hitler, authorising the holocaust. Only the craven or exceptionally naive suppose that Hitler was therefore innocent of genocide.

His governing style was to have informal, unminuted conversations with other Nazi government ministers and bureau chiefs – a form of sofa government which he preferred because he didn’t like the bother of reading briefing papers. It soon came to be recognised by followers that the way to gain Hitler’s favour – or promotion as a bureau chief – was to propose exciting, innovative policies which resonated with his aims and ways of thinking. Try the BBC series: The Nazis – A warning from history:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV57aZmKORk

The fact is that James Rhodes, the Ohio Governor at the time of the shooting of the demonstrating students at Kent State University in 1970, was also a Republican. It would have been a simple matter for one of the White House aides in the Nizon administration to phone up Governor Rhodes to convey the President’s thoughts about student demonstrations.

As for evidence, just compare the challenges that Woodward and Bernstein faced in piecing together the Watergate break-in scandal and the subsequent attempted cover-up by the White House. The journalists relied greatly on leaks from a source they dubbed “DeepThroat” – who we later can to know was the FBI associate director Mark Felt.

@ 31 SMFS

OK, it’s possible you could end up with a place that had no riots because people lived in mortal fear of the cops, but the cure’s worse than the disease. We could also lower crime by excuting every single suspected criminal. Guess why we don’t?

Cylux

He was a father too. So whether you agree with it or not, some people cared about him.
Plus, generally when you tell massive outright porkie pies about what went down*, you should really expect grieving people to be just a bit pissed off when they find out the truth, and their friends and neighbours to also be a bit pissed off.

Of course people might be angry – but some of their anger is not warranted. It was Duggan who forced the armed officers into action. That they might have not carried out the action in the best way is secondary IMO. I think that they don’t need to put themselves in such danger by too getting close, and then having to shoot because they feel they are in danger. A clear case of that was the guy who was shooting out the window of his Chelsea home. The police could have stayed back further and he might still be alive.
But this wasn’t just about Duggan. It was also about the victimhood politics that exsists in sections of the black community where people like to pretend that it’s still 1976 and the police are still the big bad enemy.
Where every time a person dies when they come into contact with the police, that it was probably deliberate racist killing by the police. You’ve seen the real life cop shows and how even people caught driving with no insurance will start to get physical and aggressive with the poilice these days – so of course the police are constantly having to subdue and overpower people who are fighting against them. I’m sure very few of the cases are death because of racist police – but the narrative doesn’t work like that.

Just see the pictures at the top of Lee Jasper’s blog. Of him self as a kid, then (obviously) a very ”politically aware of young man”, and then shaking hands with the very dodgy Jesse Jackson.
http://leejasper.blogspot.com/2011/03/mysterious-death-of-smiley-culture.html

Btw, is my point of view seen as ”terribly right wing” on Liberal Conspiracy?
When I make such a point, it seems like people don’t want to go near it. The OP’s are made, (about the riots in this case), but try to get to the bottom of things and I get the impression that several people would see what I’ve said as trolling.

The roots of the riots were in a culture that has developed in the face of our quite miserable capitalist system, where people are either not able to get the jobs they want, or unwilling to do the jobs that are left, and have no respect for the wider society.

@ damon

But this wasn’t just about Duggan. It was also about the victimhood politics that exsists in sections of the black community where people like to pretend that it’s still 1976 and the police are still the big bad enemy.

That’ll be why Claudia Webbe, the chairperson of Operation Trident, asserted that many black people see Duggan’s shooting as “yet another unjust death in custody” and that young black people in Tottenham are “still six, seven, eight times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white counterparts”, then.

It was Duggan who forced the armed officers into action. That they might have not carried out the action in the best way is secondary IMO. I think that they don’t need to put themselves in such danger by too getting close, and then having to shoot because they feel they are in danger.

The problem, which you do not seem to get damon, is not just that they killed him while arresting him, but that they then lied through their teeth as to the circumstances that led to his death, and began prevaricating while they got their “official story” straight. Meanwhile, a drip of leaks was feeding out the actual information as to what happened, which at first gave the impression that Duggan was killed in a roadside execution (he arguably still was) – now had the police been honest and upfront from the start, instead of trying to make it look like they shot back after being shot at and wounded first then perhaps things would have been calmer. No one forced the police to continue to make the decisions they did after they had killed Mark Duggan, though “protect your own” does seem to be the number one rule of the police force, as anyone with a memory to the first statements of how Ian Tomlinson died can recall.

But, that “victimhood politics” you spout off about – well, when the police kill a member of the local black community, then lie about the circumstances and get found out, then treat his next of kin with complete disdain, and then attack a sixteen year old girl with whom they had the advantage of numbers and of being better armed and protected at his vigil – it kinda gets very fucking vindicated, doesn’t it.

Yes it looks like they lied or got thier facts wrong early on after the Duggan shooting.
That might suggest it’s better to say nothing till all the facts come in.
So having a group out of angry people outside a police station demanding answers, when no one inside really knows what went on is a difficult situation.
I’m not going to defend the police when it comes to them being too violent to people when they’ve got their riot gear on. It’s just something they do unfortunately. All police do it, from Athens to Seattle.

This police blog was widely read after the riots. ”Inspector Gadget” he calls himself, and is thought to be a real serving policeman.
http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/tottenham-a-warning-for-the-future/

Do you think there is such a thing as ”therapeutic alienation” Cylux? I do.
http://manhattan-institute.com/html/_chicsuntimes-defiance.htm

No, that isn’t true at all. What actually happened was the IPCC managed to give the impression to some journalists that the police had shot Duggan in a the course of a gun fight. No one from the police said this. Then, journalists being journalists, copied each others copy and the story grew legs The police later explained what actually happened, and then everyone proceeded to get very hot and bothered.

I spoke to numerous people at the time who were absolutely furious about the fact that the police had “lied through their teeth”. Yes, the arguments went, burning London to the ground seems a little extreme–but the police lied! You can see why this might make people want to smash their city into a smoking ruin, can’t you? Of course, none of them actually bothered to check to see whether their rage was in anyway justified by the reality of what happened, and when the IPCC finally released their statement–surprise surprise!–it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference.

In other words, people started out angry and worked backwards, looking for something to be angry about. That the reasons for their anger were largely ephemeral and fantastical is largely the point.

We could easily flip this and say, What caused Breivik to go on the rampage in Norway? Well, the LibCon explanation for violence ported over to this case is that it was caused by the fact that cultural Marxists pissed him off. No cultural Marxists, no murderous rampage!

@39: “We could also lower crime by excuting every single suspected criminal. Guess why we don’t?”

Just a few dead bodies?

Capital punishment was a regular sentence available on conviction in trials by jury for a wide range of crimes from petty theft to rape and murder:

“Some thirty-five thousand people were condemned to death in England and Wales between 1770 and 1830, and seven thousand were ultimately executed, the majority convicted of crimes such as burglary, horse theft, or forgery. Mostly poor trades people, these terrified men and women would suffer excruciating death before large and excited crowds.”
VAC Gatrell: The Hanging Tree – Execution and the English People 1770-1868 (Oxford UP, 1994)

Public hangings were popular entertainment. But our ancestors were more astute than is commonly realised. They appreciated that if a convicted thief could be hanged, something extra special was necessary for truly heinous crimes such as treason or a threat to the life of the monarch so as to avoid perverse incentives – hence that old adage: “I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.”

Accordingly, our ancestors devised Hanging, drawing and quartering. For details, try this link but reader discretion is advised:
http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/hdq.html

Guy Fawkes and his fellow Catholic conspirators were hanged, drawn and quartered in 1606 in public for their plot to blow up Parliament on the occasion of the state opening on 5 November 1605. We have annually commemorated the uncovering of that plot since. After his arrest, Fawkes was tortured on the rack by special royal warrnt to extract from him the names of his conspirators. The special royal warrant authorising torture was necessary since torture was illegal and extraordinary rendition wasn’t a feasible option at the time.

Note: hanging is at lower cost to the public finances than keeping criminals in secure prison accommodation at a present day annual cost of £45,000.

Btw I forgot to add that for reasons of public decency, instead of hanging, drawing and quartering, women convicted of eligible crimes were burned at the stake.

Under the mercifully short reign of Mary Tudor (1553-58), more than 280 protestant heretics, both men and women, were burned at the stake.

@40 – The police ARE the enemy, though. Unless you think that kettling and charging people they beat over the heat with battons for that offence are the actions of anything but a dangerous street gang with official backing.

You’re part of the majority, right? The minority I’m part of has a terrible relationship with the London police, and for good reason – it’s not coincidence we have to handle much of our own security.

39
One compelling argument against the Utilitarian notion of punishing those who are innocent as a way of deterrent, is that if one’s own behaviour is not dependant upon whether we are punished or not, then there would be no reason for anyone to follow the law.
Pointless attempting to persuade SMFS, his/her opinions are usually based upon hatred and bigotry, these rarely are put aside for rational and reasoned debate.

These people are not down at St Paul’s are they?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJJAndpl4R0

That Smiley Culture campaign (as much as I can tell) is a bunch of BS. I wasn’t there when the police went to his house and he ended up dead, and either were any of the people on that march. So what are they all doing then? ”The police killed Smiley Culture because they’re racist murderers” seems to be the jist of it. It’s pretty pathetic – and so lazy that it brings that sort of politics into disrepute.

Now I wish LC was the kind of place where there could be some decent debate about all of this. Cylux mentioned Claudia Webbe of Operation Tridant, but she seems to be all over the place. In 2007 it was the murder of black teenagers by other black teenagers she was writing about in the Guardian. The police responded by targetting the kinds of young people who are into the street gang lifestyle.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/claudiawebbe

This is what the young people in the area that I went to school in the 1970s can be like today. Of course the police are on their cases all the time. How could they not be?
They’ve been failed by their schools and by adult society.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjql5Qjd47I

We could easily flip this and say, What caused Breivik to go on the rampage in Norway? Well, the LibCon explanation for violence ported over to this case is that it was caused by the fact that cultural Marxists pissed him off. No cultural Marxists, no murderous rampage!

I think you should stick to mathematics. This made no sense whatsoever.

No, that isn’t true at all. What actually happened was the IPCC managed to give the impression to some journalists that the police had shot Duggan in a the course of a gun fight. No one from the police said this. Then, journalists being journalists, copied each others copy and the story grew legs The police later explained what actually happened, and then everyone proceeded to get very hot and bothered.

Riiiight, that would be why the Guardian’s riot-feed first broke the leaked news that the bullet taken from the armed officer who was shot was police issue during the second day of rioting then.
Alternatively, given that the Guardian had already pretty much revealed all the circumstances by then, the IPCC had little choice but to air the truth.

In other words, people started out angry and worked backwards, looking for something to be angry about. That the reasons for their anger were largely ephemeral and fantastical is largely the point.

When the chairperson of Operation Trident can admit that blacks are being stopped and searched significantly more often than their white compatriots, and that there was a dead man in the morgue, and that tooled-up coppers felt the need to administer a beat-down to a 16 year old girl in front of several camera phones I think “largely ephemeral and fantastical” has exited the building.

Cylux,

The two explanations are direct analogues. What caused the riots? The police killed Duggan and then lied about it, or whatever. What caused the massacre in Utoya? Cultural Marxists betrayed Western civilization to the Islamists, or whatever. The point is that you are taking the proximate cause for the ultimate cause.

Riiiight, that would be why the Guardian’s riot-feed first broke the leaked news that the bullet taken from the armed officer who was shot was police issue during the second day of rioting then.

Alternatively, given that the Guardian had already pretty much revealed all the circumstances by then, the IPCC had little choice but to air the truth.

Don’t understand the point you’re making here. What are you claiming?

The IPCC are not the police. No one from the police claimed that Duggan was shot during a firefight, so the idea that the police were forced to later concede that he wasn’t and admit that they had lied doesn’t make any sense.

From El Grauniad:

Many of the first media reports specifically attributed the line about Duggan firing first to the IPCC. And our crime correspondent Sandra Laville tells me that Scotland Yard did not on any occasion brief her that officers were fired on first…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2011/aug/12/uk-riots-day-six-aftermath#block-42

When the chairperson of Operation Trident can admit that blacks are being stopped and searched significantly more often than their white compatriots, and that there was a dead man in the morgue, and that tooled-up coppers felt the need to administer a beat-down to a 16 year old girl in front of several camera phones I think “largely ephemeral and fantastical” has exited the building.

Er, no, I don’t think so, actually.

Young black people in London are annoyed because, what, they get stopped and searched by the police more than other groups? And why do they get stopped and searched more often–could it be that they commit more offences that require the police to exercise stop and search powers? I mean, I’m no expert, but I seem to remember something from basic probability theory about two events being independent IFF their conditional and unconditional expectations are equal. Kinda looks like young black males get stopped more often than other demographic groups because they’re more likely to be walking around with knives and that.

But, as a sop to our liberal sensibilities, perhaps, whenever the police stop and search a young black man, they could also stop and search an old Jewish lady, or a middle aged Asian man, or a white British infant. That way, the thoughtful and eminently reasonable young black men, who are tired of being unfairly targeted by the the big mean police, won’t feel the need to set fire to Tottenham and loot shops up and down London. Everyone wins!

@50

I mean, I’m no expert

I agree.

Plus when you make the claim that no, the police are not at fault for killing a man and misleading the public over it, they only killed him, the body charged with ensuring the police are held to account misled the public, you don’t actually strengthen your argument that much. I will however concede to your pedantry.

Though it seems rather odd that they would take the pains to investigate the bullet in the radio, if it’s source was already known and the idea that Duggan had fired back or fired first was just the result of miscommunication to the press by the IPCC…

It would be interesting to see how Vimothy would react if he was harrassed over a period of years, accused of crimes he had not committed, perhaps roughed up a few times. With reasoned, philosophical quiescence at the inevitability of the situation no doubt.

For comparison, try this news report with pictures, in the regional press, of the Occupy Protest in Oakland, California, with the associated city-wide general strike called in protest at the injury inflicted on an Iraq veteran when police were dispersing a crowd of demonstrators a few days before:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/11/occupy-oakland-.html

But who said the police are not at fault?

Clearly, neither you nor I are in any position to judge whether the police are at fault for killing Duggan. Whether they were is as irrelevant and, indeed, ephemeral as whether or not cultural Marxists really are betraying Europe to Islamic extremism (or whatever). Some people believe that they are. Some people believe that epileptic fits are the result of the influence of evil spirits. You know, it takes all sorts.

Regarding the IPCC, it’s interesting that you think it is pedantry to insist that what the IPCC does is the responsibility of the IPCC. And, that if the IPCC (or the IPCC and the press, to be more specific–or, as you would say, “pedantic”) are to blame for misleading the public as to the events surrounding Duggan’s death, then the correct attribution of blame pins this on the IPCC, and not the police. It may help to remember that the IPCC are independent of the police force–as in the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Or perhaps not.

But really, this is exactly the process I described upthread. You start out with a conclusion, and work backwards. It’s the police’s fault, for lying about Duggan’s death. And if it isn’t, it hardly matters–they’re still to blame, just for something else. “The police were lying through their teeth! Oh, what’s that you say–they weren’t? Whatever, dude! Stop being pedantic. They were though, even if they weren’t.”

Though it seems rather odd that they would take the pains to investigate the bullet in the radio, if it’s source was already known

How do you know that its source was already known? There was a gunfight. A man was killed. An officer was wounded. The responsible and professional response is to hold an investigation, it seems to me, to establish what the fsck just happened, since what the fsck just happened is probably not that easy to ascertain when it involves people shooting guns at each other, and then to tell the families and press. Which is what the police actually did.

Sunny said somewhere else that he listens to the Wu Tang Clan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjZRAvsZf1g

Fair enough if you take it as just a bit of fantasy like some film or piece of fiction.
But unfortunately, a lot of kids actually try to emulate that nonsense as their real lived lives. Mark Duggan did by the sound of him. It must be really hard to police people like that. Particularly when they will always have defenders such as the liberal #occupy type people.

For what it’s worth (and it might not be much) Brendan O’Neill reckoned that the state had taken over too much of many of that section of society’s lives.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10970/

It kind of makes sense. The kid’s minds are in an imagined South Central LA, meanwhile they’ve got teachers and social workers almost wiping their backsides for them.
A family member of mine works with ”vunerable” young people in south London and she says it can be a thankless task. And some of them were arrested for involvement in the riots.

@54 His gun was never fired. There was no gunfight. Two shots fired, both hit Mark, one passing through his arm and into the copper’s radio.

Regarding the IPCC, it’s interesting that you think it is pedantry to insist that what the IPCC does is the responsibility of the IPCC. And, that if the IPCC (or the IPCC and the press, to be more specific–or, as you would say, “pedantic”) are to blame for misleading the public as to the events surrounding Duggan’s death, then the correct attribution of blame pins this on the IPCC, and not the police. It may help to remember that the IPCC are independent of the police force–as in the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Or perhaps not.

Indeed, no doubt as independent as the Press Complaints Commission is from the press. As the saying goes, just because you call yourself the Democratic Republic of Congo, it doesn’t automatically mean you are democratic, or a republic. Of course at the time the IPCC would only have been able to relay events told to them by the police to the press, so, we have a choice, either the IPCC relayed what information they were given verbatim, or they put their own pro-police spin on the story.

For your own theory of “worked their way backwards for things to be angry about” this kinda fails miserably, because all this came out AFTER the riots had finished, and did not lead to a resurgence of violence. What we do have leading up to the riots is – the general harassment the community faces from the police on a daily basis, Mark’s death, the stonewalling of his family, the press release from the IPCC implying that Mark had fired first and was killed in self defence, and then the savage beating of the 16 year old girl by riot-gear police at his vigil – an event you have not yet bothered to address, which given it’s proximity to when it all kicked off might well have been when torch finally touched bone dry tinder.

@54 His gun was never fired. There was no gunfight. Two shots fired, both hit Mark, one passing through his arm and into the copper’s radio.

Who is Mark?

Anyway, call it what you want, at the end of the whateveritis, two people were shot, and one of them killed. Unless the police force is, as an institution, in constant telepathic communication with all its individual officers like the frickin borg, then it seems highly likely that, after an incident like this, it will want to hold an investigation to work out what happened.

You seem to be assuming that the police force, as an institution, simply knows everything that happens involving their officers, and so therefore holding an investigation after an incident in which armed officers killed a suspect is not only not best practice, but also somehow suspect.

39. Chaise Guevara

OK, it’s possible you could end up with a place that had no riots because people lived in mortal fear of the cops, but the cure’s worse than the disease. We could also lower crime by excuting every single suspected criminal. Guess why we don’t?

Is it? Can you think of any reason why anyone should riot in Britain? Any sane, sensible, rational reason why anyone in a democracy with the rule of law, with regular elections, with a heart-felt and deep commitment to ending racism and all forms of discrimination, should need to riot?

No, I can’t either. They do not need to live in mortal fear. But they need to know that actions have consequences. Illegal actions will be met with firmness and punishment. Which is not presently the case.

We don’t execute every single criminal because we are too gutless to defend the weak and vulnerable.

Cylux

The problem, which you do not seem to get damon, is not just that they killed him while arresting him, but that they then lied through their teeth as to the circumstances that led to his death, and began prevaricating while they got their “official story” straight.

Sorry but would you care to defend this gutless smear? How do you know they lied? When a large number of people are involved in an expected incident, it is natural that there will be confusion about what went on. The only way to know is to hold an inquiry. Which takes days. What the media want is a response now. So the police issue statements about what they know at the time. Which is incomplete. What is likely to have happened here is that after the incident, someone high up spoke to all the officers, one of whom said he heard a shot, assumed it was Duggan and shot the guy dead. It turned out later that the shot came from another officer. Perhaps. That is not lying is it now?

(he arguably still was)

Go on then, argue it.

@58 – Yes. Plenty of reasons.

And yes, the police said *what happened*. Not what *may have happened*. They lied. There’s a major pattern of that lately. You cannot believe a word they say.

“Illegal” actions, like sneezing in the street, or (soon) refusing to leave private land when told to for any reason whatsoever HAS been met with a violent, hostile response from the state, when peacefully protesting.

If you are not afraid of the police, then you’re part of the 1%. Of course you want protesters to be massacred, it’s entirely typical of your class.

@ 59 SMFS

“Is it? Can you think of any reason why anyone should riot in Britain? Any sane, sensible, rational reason why anyone in a democracy with the rule of law, with regular elections, with a heart-felt and deep commitment to ending racism and all forms of discrimination, should need to riot?”

But we don’t live in that magical country. I don’t support rioting, and especially condemn the kind of rioting-for-the-hell-of-it we saw recently, but trying to sweep people’s concerns under the rug by acting as if we have no problems with the political setup is silly. Our form of democracy still leaves many, many people voiceless (aside from ranting on the internet or signing the odd pointless petition). There is still plenty of discrimination, and I don’t see a “heart-felt and deep commitment” on the part of the system to end it.

“No, I can’t either. They do not need to live in mortal fear. But they need to know that actions have consequences. Illegal actions will be met with firmness and punishment. Which is not presently the case.”

Simply untrue – for example, the police have been working hard to identify rioters, and those convicted are often getting sentences far stronger than would usually be expected. Your statement is only true if you’re defining “punishment” as “execution”, or if you think we should punish people when we lack the evidence to prove their guilt.

“We don’t execute every single criminal because we are too gutless to defend the weak and vulnerable.”

No, we don’t execute every single criminal because we’re not mental enough to think that killing people who shoplift, drink-drive, or smoke cannibis is a proportional response.

SMFS @59:

“Can you think of any reason why anyone should riot in Britain?”

A number.

Deliberate creation of an underclass with its lack of any prospect of anything other than a lifetime of sh!t.

Not only the presence of what one may term a ‘feral overclass’ who are not merely wealthy way beyond the actual value of what they do; but the fact that they wave their supremacy in our faces like a fist and expect us to treat them as demi-gods.

The closing down of vital support structures for the most disadvantaged, or the handing over of those same structures to private corporations to asset-strip and then close them down.

The complete self-isolation of the professional politicians from the consequences of their decisions; rather like the architects who design appalling buildings which they know they will never have to work or live in themselves.

Want any more?

“Any sane, sensible, rational reason why anyone in a democracy…”

Ah, yes, democracy!

“Good evening, dear citizen/consumer! Remember us? We were last around here five years ago. Here’s a piece of paper with three boxes on it. They’re labelled with your three permitted options.

“Thank you for your co-operation and for being a good citizen/consumer. We’ll see you again in five years time. Goodbye!”

You mean that democracy?

“…with the rule of law”

Whose law?

“…with regular elections…”

See above.

“…with a heart-felt and deep commitment to ending racism and all forms of discrimination…”

Like ending discrimination against the disabled by getting ATOS to say that they’re just as able to work as anyone else, and so should have all their benefit entitlements withdrawn and stop being whingeing spongers?

“…should need to riot?”

The only surprise should be that it hasn’t happened earlier and more frequently.

SMFS@59:

“We don’t execute every single criminal because we are too gutless to defend the weak and vulnerable.”

Right, so that’s Milords Taylor and Hanningfield à la lanterne, then. Y’know, pour décourager les autres?

Really, dear boy, sometimes you go beyond parody.

So how did this ”debate” go? Marks out of ten?

Pretty poor and about a three out of ten I’d say. Which is a pity. Maybe it’s the format that makes good political discussion so hard. And that a conversation face to face would be a lot more productive.

But when I hear debate of such things elsewhere it doesn’t seem much better actually.
For some people the police will always be like the SPG of old and today’s Territorial Support Group, going around harrassing and beating people up, and not wanting to even look at the issues I raised about ”therapeutic alienation” and why so many young people in inner cities and outer estates are not in education or work.

And why this boy – who came to Britain as a young child from Congo with his mother, ended up feeling like he was growing up in a hopeless situation.
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/i4i+aj+nakasila+biography/1394447.html

Bob @ 45

Under the mercifully short reign of Mary Tudor (1553-58), more than 280 protestant heretics, both men and women, were burned at the stake.

Mmm…. Under her successor Elizabeth, 312 Catholics were executed. Doesn’t strike me as much of an improvement really.

But, as a sop to our liberal sensibilities, perhaps, whenever the police stop and search a young black man, they could also stop and search an old Jewish lady, or a middle aged Asian man, or a white British infant. That way, the thoughtful and eminently reasonable young black men, who are tired of being unfairly targeted by the the big mean police, won’t feel the need to set fire to Tottenham and loot shops up and down London. Everyone wins!

Yes, that would mitigate the risk of riots.

Unless the police force is, as an institution, in constant telepathic communication with all its individual officers like the frickin borg, then it seems highly likely that, after an incident like this, it will want to hold an investigation to work out what happened.

You seem to be assuming that the police force, as an institution, simply knows everything that happens involving their officers, and so therefore holding an investigation after an incident in which armed officers killed a suspect is not only not best practice, but also somehow suspect.

I agree the police aren’t telepathic. I would agree if you said they aren’t all trigger happy.

I think there are a couple of problems here. One, is that (certainly in retrospect) sometimes some firearms officers have got themselves into / been put into situations where a shooting (and death) was inevitable. The second is that ‘the police’ (and the IPCC) sometimes don’t help themselves in terms of communicating about what and what did not happen. Some members of the public do not recall all the firearms incidents on which nothing controversial happened (some 20,000 pa), they only remember those where something ‘went wrong’, and/or there was miscommunication (accidental or deliberate), perhaps some anonymous smearing of the victim (this happened with de Menezes) and suchlike.

“We don’t execute every single criminal because we are too gutless to defend the weak and vulnerable.”

No, we don’t execute every single criminal because we’re not mental enough to think that killing people who shoplift, drink-drive, or smoke cannibis is a proportional response.

Mental Anti-Defamation league on line one…

Yes, that would mitigate the risk of riots.

In what sense?

Also, note that an equivalent proposition is: if the Euro-cultural Marxist elite stopped selling out Western civilization to the Islamists, that would mitigate the risk of any more Breivik-style massacres.

The chap from the EDL tried this on Newsnight (IIRC), and it was identified by liberals as an implicit threat–which, of course, it is.

vimothy,

Yes, that would mitigate the risk of riots.

In what sense?

In the sense of the meaning of the (words that form the) sentence.

Perhaps I don’t understand your question.

I’m asking you to explain how and why that would work.

I think there are a couple of problems here…

I (broadly) agree with your comment. The basic issue is the presumption of the guilt of the police on the part of the public & media. People start with a conclusion (the police are at fault) and work backwards from there, looking for evidence that confirms this, whereas evidence that contradicts the conclusion is ignored. Simple confirmation bias, in other words.

Perhaps the police could “manage their image” a bit more adeptly, but really, I would prefer it if they concentrate on policing and leaving influencing popular culture to the experts.

vimothy,

Perhaps the police could “manage their image” a bit more adeptly, but really, I would prefer it if they concentrate on policing and leaving influencing popular culture to the experts.

This seems a bit sniffy / dismissive.

ISTM ‘image management’ is vital to policing.

The Nine Principles of Policing
http://www.civitas.org.uk/pubs/policeNine.php

Principles 2, 3, 5 and 7 seem pertinent.

And the Met has a ‘press bureau’ – iow, you don’t need to stop police officers from policing.

vimothy,

Statistics show that ‘black people’ and ‘Asian people’ are more likely to be stopped than ‘white people’. Some of those stopped and searched are innocent of any wrongdoing and they feel there is ‘no reason’ for the stop other than because they are not white. If it happens more than once, they will be more inclined to think unfavourably about the police. If they hear that people they identify with are also (in their opinion) unjustifiably stopped and searched, they will be more inclined to think unfavourably about the police. Their friends, families and acquaintances are also more inclined to think unfavourably about the police. None of that is fantasy, it is about perceptions resulting (in part) from what the police do.

We can do things about such realities (weighing up the pros and cons of course), for example stopping whites as frequently as non-whites (or non-whites as frequently as whites). This would lead to less people thinking they are being ‘picked on’ just because they are not white.

I’m not sure what can be done about fantasies involving Euro-cultural Marxist sell-outs.

Note rule #5 in your Citvas link:

To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion; but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws.

Statistics show that ‘black people’ and ‘Asian people’ are more likely to be stopped than ‘white people’.

Statistically, I’m also sure that “male people” are also more likely to be stopped that “female people” and that “young people” are more likely to be stopped than “old people”, and that “rich people” are more likely to be stopped than “poor people”. It would be extremely strange if this were not the case, because that would suggest that the the likelihood of someone walking around with a knife or a bag of pills is independent of the fact that they are a wealthy elderly widower from Berkshire, or whatever.

Forget about the race angle for a moment and just think of this in terms of young men. Young men are more likely to stopped and searched by other groups. Now, young men think that this is unfair and demand that they are searched less or other groups are searched more. This means that young men are to be given a special protected status before the law and treated more leniently than they otherwise be given their relative crime rates. Furthermore, if we don’t agree to these terms, we are reliably informed, young men may well have to smash up your cities again, until you get the message.

What are we to make of this argument?

“rich people” are more likely to be stopped than “poor people”

D’oh!

Anyway, you get the picture.

In your analysis of the causes of the riots, you make a rather epic assumption, and results in a recommendation that is all wrong, in my view. Your assumption is that if we make concessions to the rioters, this will satisfy their reasonable grievances and they will come back under Whitehall’s yoke. (No one is suggesting that we do the same with Breivik. Why not?)

This is a key principle of modern progressive idealism / liberalism. Of course, we saw the limits of rule by consent during the riots. What happens if people decide that they want to burn the city to the ground, not because someone in authority was mean to them, but just to see it burn? In that case, there aren’t enough concessions that you can make that will satisfy them. Everyone else will simply have to wait until the belligerents get bored and decide to stop.

When I spit in my enemy’s face, and he grovels at my feet, apologising, my first thoughts are not, “oh, he’s sorry for being spat on–okay, okay, I was a little bit OTT there”. My first thoughts are that he is craven and weak, and in response I become more aggressive, not less.

The people who drove the rioting are not nice people who have been mistreated. (They are rational though. Their logic is, I want that and no one will stop me if I take it. This is actually 100% correct). You should come to where I live and meet some of them. They will beat you and take your shit, not because they need it or because it was denied to them unfairly, but just because they can.

vimothy,

What are we to make of this argument?

That you seem to be thinking about this in terms of some kind of ‘blackmail’ instead of risk management.

That’s what it is. It can be risk management as well, of course, but only if it actually reduces risk. I don’t think that it will.

@ 74 vimothy

“Forget about the race angle for a moment and just think of this in terms of young men. Young men are more likely to stopped and searched by other groups. Now, young men think that this is unfair and demand that they are searched less or other groups are searched more. This means that young men are to be given a special protected status before the law and treated more leniently than they otherwise be given their relative crime rates. ”

Um, no. What you’re talking about there is EQUAL treatment. It’s only special leniency if you think that specific, law-abiding young men personally deserve to be harrassed for the crime of sharing a demographic with a number of criminals. There are obvious benefits to profile-based stop-and-search, but don’t pretend it’s fair on those targeted.

vimothy,

In your analysis of the causes of the riots, you make a rather epic assumption, and results in a recommendation that is all wrong, in my view. Your assumption is that if we make concessions to the rioters, this will satisfy their reasonable grievances and they will come back under Whitehall’s yoke.

Far from it. I think there were a number of factors – a number of motivations, inclinations, some of them more important to particular individuals than others. I think a lot of people rioted because they believed they could get away with it. I think others rioted because they wanted to ‘get back at The Man’. I think others rioted because they wanted free stuff. And still others had other reasons / mixes of reasons.( I think people who are trying to find a single cause of the riots are foolish.) We might be able to do something about some of these things.

As the report l(linked to in the OP) says, “Young people were motivated to get involved in rioting or looting by what they thought they might gain, but whether they chose to get involved or not was affected by a range of situational, personal and contextual influences.”

This article may be of interest:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15574189

How can we mitigate the risk of riots in general? Maybe we can’t in a general sense. But maybe we can mitigate some ‘risk factors’. Put simply, if people aren’t dissatisfied with The Man they aren’t going to riot because they are dissatisfied with The Man (they might riot motivated by other things, of course), are they?

(No one is suggesting that we do the same with Breivik. Why not?)

Because his is a fantasy. How can we pander to it or otherwise persuade him? You are saying “here are two equivalent situations” but they aren’t equivalent – some of the beliefs of the rioters are rooted in reality. Those are beliefs we might be able do something about.

Apparently, in 2005 Staffordshire police found that some people became ‘dissatisfied’ because they thought they were unfairly being targetted by stop and search. So Staffs police decided to go to those estates and tell people why they were running the operation (it was to stop a gang war). Dissatisfaction was reduced (note: not wholly disappeared, just reduced), the majority thought OK that’s fine. But your view would seem to be, “why should Staffs police go to those estates and explain what they are doing?”

Chaise,

There are obvious benefits to profile-based stop-and-search, but don’t pretend it’s fair on those targeted.

It’s possibly worth point out that PACE says the police aren’t supposed to stop and search people “based on generalisations or stereotypical images of certain groups or categories of people as more likely to be involved in criminal activity”.

To be fair,

In the mid 1990s, ethnicity emerged as a significant predictor of risks of being stopped on foot, once other factors had been taken into account, such as age, gender, area of residence, income and patterns of leisure activity. However, in 1999 membership of minority ethnic groups no longer increased risks of being stopped on foot, once these other factors had been taken into account. Asians were less likely to be stopped after other factors had been taken into account. Thus police decision-making relating to foot-stops appear to have changed since the mid-1990s, reflecting the impact of factors such as the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. The problem of disproportionality remains, of course – but the BCS suggests that the reasons for it lie in decision processes only indirectly linked to ethnicity that may then lead to unwitting discrimination.

http://library.npia.police.uk/docs/hors/hors223.pdf

(curiously, ethnicity remains a significant predictor in terms of vehicle stops.)

vimothy,

The basic issue is the presumption of the guilt of the police on the part of the public & media. People start with a conclusion (the police are at fault) and work backwards from there, looking for evidence that confirms this, whereas evidence that contradicts the conclusion is ignored. Simple confirmation bias, in other words.

I agree that many people presume guilt but I don’t think the media tends to initially presume guilt; ISTM that the media initially tends to uncritically run with what ‘the police’ (and anonymous sources, let’s not forget them) say*. It is when there is some controversy revealed – an innocent man is shot, say – that you start to see presumption of guilt in some quarters. This isn’t helped by miscommunication (inadvertent or otherwise), a perception of a ‘closing of the ranks’ and so on.

Communication really is important – swiftly release a clear, unambiguous and concise message (even if just to say, “all we know right now is that the man was shot, we don’t yet know all the details, we’re still investigating”, after all it’s only been an hour or two). Keep the family in the loop. I think the authorities should explain why an inquiry into say a police shooting takes four to six months with an inquest scheduled to start four months after the event – there may be good reasons, I don’t know, but it seems a long time in the case of say Mark Duggan.

* and, to be fair, why wouldn’t they? We can usually trust what the police say.

@ 80 ukliberty

It’s slightly odd that it doesn’t list factors such as previous criminal record (which might be known to local cops) and whether or not the person stopped was actually found to be in possession of anything illegal (which might validate police claims that the individual was acting suspiciously), both of which would be more understandable explanations for searching someone than age, gender etc.

Also, if Asians are stopped less often when other factors are accounted for, that still suggests profiling.

Um, no. What you’re talking about there is EQUAL treatment. It’s only special leniency if you think that specific, law-abiding young men personally deserve to be harrassed for the crime of sharing a demographic with a number of criminals. There are obvious benefits to profile-based stop-and-search, but don’t pretend it’s fair on those targeted.

Au contraire. Obviously, law-abiding anyone don’t deserve to be harassed by the police. But the police are not God, and so whether any individual is in fact a decent law abiding person is a random variable ex ante.

Imagine a world in which there are two groups of people, Ms and Fs. Most crime is committed by Ms, say. If the police are investigating both groups at the same rate, then this is not equal treatment before the law, since groups should be investigated according to the conditional expectation that they have committed a crime, i.e. the relative proportion of police investigations should equal the relative proportion of crime rates.

Arguing otherwise is in fact arguing that the police should arbitrarily treat one group more leniently, and the other less leniently.

@ vimothy

You’re ignoring individuals.

Say that 10% of young men and 5% of young women regularly carry contraband like drugs or knives. Say also that Alice and Bob (both young) are two friends who never carry contraband, or indeed commit criminal acts of any kind, and have no inclination to do so in future.

Under your system, Bob will get “randomly” searched twice as often as Alice, despite the fact that they are equally guilty of breaking the law (that is, not at all). What would be fair, in fact, would be them both being searched the same amount. How is it “lenient” for two individuals who are identical in all relevant terms to be treated equally?

If you’re about to say “ah, but they’re not equal, because Bob is male and thus twice as likely to commit crime”, you’re misusing statistics. Bob either commits crime or he doesn’t; he’s 0% criminal, not 10% criminal. Individuals are not weighted averages of their demographic. For the same reason, it’s not fair to automatically refuse a woman who applies for a job that involves heavy lifting on the grounds that men are stronger on average: this specific woman might be the strongest out of all the applicants.

As I said before, there are arguments in favour of profiling, mainly that it allows more efficient use of police time. But there are downsides too, which need to be considered rather than waved away.

Under your system, Bob will get “randomly” searched twice as often as Alice

This is correct. Under a fair system, the probability that Bob is searched is equal to the probability that Bob is committing a (relevant) crime.

Whether or not Bob or Alice have actually committed relevant crimes is a random variable. The probability that they have is 0.1 for the former and 0.05 for the latter.

The probability that Bob is going to be searched should be proportionate to the probability that Bob has committed a crime. Since Bob commits crimes at twice the rate as Alice, Bob gets stopped and searched by the police two-times more frequently than Alice. The police are not picking on Bob–the police are dong their job.

On the other hand, if Bobs and Alices are stopped at the same rate, say, then the probability that someone who has committed a crime is going to be stopped is different conditional on whether they are a Bob or an Alice. This is clearly unfair, and amounts for protected status for Bobs, since Bobs have a lower stop and search rate, conditional on their having committed a crime. If you doubt this, just write down the argument explicitly using conditional expectations and you’ll see that this is the logically correct result.

@83 – Harassment by thugs is harassment no matter what their gang colours are.

And “leave it to experts”. That’s the problem, they started following political orders rather than doing their duty. And no it looks increasingly like there’s no way back on the trust issue.

Let A=”person is a criminal”, and let B=”person is stopped and searched”. We want P(A|B)=P(A). In other words, we want the probability that someone is a criminal, conditional on the fact that the police have stopped them to equal the probability that that person is in fact a criminal. This implies that the police should stop twice as many Bobs as Alice.

61. Chaise Guevara

But we don’t live in that magical country. I don’t support rioting, and especially condemn the kind of rioting-for-the-hell-of-it we saw recently, but trying to sweep people’s concerns under the rug by acting as if we have no problems with the political setup is silly. Our form of democracy still leaves many, many people voiceless (aside from ranting on the internet or signing the odd pointless petition). There is still plenty of discrimination, and I don’t see a “heart-felt and deep commitment” on the part of the system to end it.

Sorry but which of those conditions I listed do we lack in Britain? Are you asserting we do not have the rule of law? We do not hold regular elections? We are not a democracy? We do not have a heart-felt commitment to ending all forms of discrimination? Which?

I am not trying to sweep people’s concerns under the carpet. I am pointing out that they are specious. A different issue. No one is voiceless. They all have a vote. There may be discrimination but if you can’t see the serious efforts we have made to end it – and the massive progress that has been made – you’re wilfully blind. Worse than that really.

There is simply no justification for rioting in Britain.

Simply untrue – for example, the police have been working hard to identify rioters, and those convicted are often getting sentences far stronger than would usually be expected. Your statement is only true if you’re defining “punishment” as “execution”, or if you think we should punish people when we lack the evidence to prove their guilt.

Stronger than expected simply means a slight sting with their slap on the wrist, rather than any actual punishment. They know they won’t be caught – and by and large they have not been – and they know that they will not serve any real jail time. The few sentences will get big headlines and then they will be quietly released. Even so, stronger than expected? Of course they expected no real punishment at all. That is what all their experience told them would happen. That is how the police actually behaved at the time. I think punishment should mean something people don’t like. Prison is not punishment any more in Britain.

No, we don’t execute every single criminal because we’re not mental enough to think that killing people who shoplift, drink-drive, or smoke cannibis is a proportional response.

No, we don’t execute people because we prefer young girls to be kidnapped, raped and murdered by repeat offenders than to take the tough decisions that are necessary to protect the weak and vulnerable.

2:18 pm, November 6, 201162. The Judge

Deliberate creation of an underclass with its lack of any prospect of anything other than a lifetime of sh!t.

Could you please provide evidence of the deliberation that went into this creation? Ta. What is more, no one in Britain is faced with a lifetime of sh!t unless they choose it. The underclass embraces poverty. We don’t force it on them.

Not only the presence of what one may term a ‘feral overclass’ who are not merely wealthy way beyond the actual value of what they do; but the fact that they wave their supremacy in our faces like a fist and expect us to treat them as demi-gods.

So basically it comes down to your hatred of people who worked hard in school, got a good degree and did something with their life?

The closing down of vital support structures for the most disadvantaged, or the handing over of those same structures to private corporations to asset-strip and then close them down.

This has not happened. It is fantasy of your own mind. At worst they are talking about it. No more.

The complete self-isolation of the professional politicians from the consequences of their decisions; rather like the architects who design appalling buildings which they know they will never have to work or live in themselves.

Well that is true. The EU for instance.

You mean that democracy?

Nice to see you disqualify yourself from serious conversation.

Whose law?

Do you get these with some Trot cliche handbook?

@87 – Then we can’t be surprised when it turns out than eleventy times more bobs are searched, often the same bobs repeatedly because their cousin once accidentally trod on their gang mate’s foot.

ukliberty

Apparently, in 2005 Staffordshire police found that some people became ‘dissatisfied’ because they thought they were unfairly being targetted by stop and search. So Staffs police decided to go to those estates and tell people why they were running the operation (it was to stop a gang war). Dissatisfaction was reduced (note: not wholly disappeared, just reduced), the majority thought OK that’s fine. But your view would seem to be, “why should Staffs police go to those estates and explain what they are doing?”

Except that is asking the wrong question. The real question is why did people on those Estates not see something that is so self-evidently true? Why do they hate the police, and by extension, the rest of British society, so much? Now no doubt a small part of it is due to the Trot radicals who since the 1980s sought to go down to such estates and create racially-based hatred. Worked nicely for them on the whole. No doubt a small part is immigration of people who were simply raised to hate the police, and/or British people and/or White people. No doubt part of it is the culture of modern Britain that sees thugs as heroes. But there is the problem – with the attitude of those people on the Estates. Not with the police.

SMFS,

… no doubt … …No doubt… …No doubt…

It’s good to approach these things with an open mind, isn’t it?

@91 So open in fact his brain fell out.

Try this BBC sound interview on Tuesday 9 August of two girls in Croydon during the rioting and looting there:

Two girls who took part in Monday night’s riots in Croydon have boasted that they were showing police and “the rich” that “we can do what we want”.

The pair who were drinking wine looted from a local shop at 09:30 BST on Tuesday morning, spoke to the BBC’s Leana Hosea.

Croydon was one of several areas plagued by unrest on Monday night, on a third night of riots in the capital.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14458424

By some accounts, the costs of damage to property and from looting in Croydon were greater than in Tottenham. According to reports from Croydon Council, more than 100 people were re-housed in the immediate aftermath of riots. Some of the families lost everything, including their possessions and everyday essentials. One young black guy, sitting in his car, was shot dead.

@90 – Because gang harassment doesn’t mean it’s not gang harassment when the gang is wearing “socially acceptable” colours, to the rich.

And ooh, trot race haters. Say, do you believe in the ZOG, just to get a clear idea of your precise level on the wingnut scale?

@93 – Yes, when you light a spark in a powder keg it’ll explode. And when you keep priming it and give the spark-makers in that case even more powers to abuse people without recourse rather than punishing them, you’re going to have more explosions.

Sadly. As usual you think it’s just fine for that to happen, I see.

ukliberty,

I think there were a number of factors – a number of motivations, inclinations, some of them more important to particular individuals than others

I agree, of course, and think your list of motivations are all at least plausible.

We might be able to do something about some of these things.

Indeed we might.

As the report l(linked to in the OP) says, “Young people were motivated to get involved in rioting or looting by what they thought they might gain, but whether they chose to get involved or not was affected by a range of situational, personal and contextual influences.”

But this is the kind of bland, borderline-tautological inanity that I was complaining about at the top of the thread. I am quite mystified as to what the analytical content of that sentence is supposed to be. “People were motivated by the things that motivated them, and this was different across people.” Okay, sure.

How can we mitigate the risk of riots in general? Maybe… we can mitigate some ‘risk factors’. Put simply, if people aren’t dissatisfied with The Man they aren’t going to riot because they are dissatisfied with The Man…

Again this assumption. Breivik is also pissed off with The Man. Comparatively, he did a lot more damage. Perhaps we should make some concessions towards white nationalists, just for the purposes of risk management–the marginal pay-off must be orders of magnitude greater, right?

Now, you claim that Breivik’s grievances were all fantasy, whereas the rioters had (some) grievances rooted in reality. But this is clearly an ideological reading, it seems to me, that confuses is with ought. Breivik was not so completely out to lunch. Like any fanatic, and indeed, just like the rioters, there were several parts fantasy to several parts reality in there. In fact, it was so easy to find quasi-respectable people with similar views to Breivik that shortly after the massacre this very website generate a whole slew of articles denouncing them as contributing factors to Breivik’s sense of grievance.

It’s also easy to see how concessions could be made that might satisfy some of the more reasonable elements in the white nationalist underground (assuming such a thing exists). For instance, deporting Muslims. This would be grossly immoral, of course–but then, trying to buy off groups of people who have just sacked and burned your capital city under the threat of more violence is not exactly a noble cause either.

And aren’t there also people who contributed to and justified the rioters sense of grievance? Indeed there were. They weren’t sitting at home thinking this stuff up between games of Grand Theft Auto and huffs of gas. Your response to the rioters is to say, violence bad, but let’s see what we can do. Your response to Breivik is to say, we will make no concessions to your crazy programme on the basis of violence or the threat of. The latter response is the just and correct one. But it should be applied equally regardless of what you consider to be the relative merits of the implied political programme.

@96 – The right manage to parody themselves themselves. Trying to prevent anger-filled riots (which lead to looting) because of repeated official abuses is of course identical to directed terrorism.

After all, in your world, they’re committing the cardinal sin of disturbing your piece of mind, and are hence entirely equivalent! So, what are you calling for, instant arrests of any groups of more than 4 people under 16, and permanent curfews across the country for the under 18′s?

Not to mention more power for the police, abolishing the IPCC, and creating an offence of “looking like they might one day create a riot”?

This amateur video of the rioting in Croydon provides a terrifying insight into the often mindless viciousness of the rioters, showing their disregard not just for the owners of property that was damaged and looted but for the well being of others around them – the clip shows a young guy being mugged and robbed of his motor scooter
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8704461/Man-dragged-off-scooter-by-mob-in-Croydon-riot.html

Most of the shops shown in the beginning scenes of the video are owned or managed by Asians. I’ve links to other clips showing a distraught shop worker faced by the task of clearing up the mess of the family shop as it was left by looters. The typical victims here are not “rich” people but families striving to make a living in the flagging retail market where the competition between stores is often intense, basically because the convenience stores are stocking and selling the same kinds of groceries, booze and newspapers.

Let A=”person is a criminal”, and let B=”person is stopped and searched”. We want P(A|B)=P(A). In other words, we want the probability that someone is a criminal, conditional on the fact that the police have stopped them to equal the probability that that person is in fact a criminal. This implies that the police should stop twice as many Bobs as Alice.

Let me just clarify something: I’m not saying that the police should go out and deliberately try to stop twice as many Bobs as Alices. I’m saying that, if the police are doing their job properly, and stopping people on the basis of their criminality, and doing so independently of whether they are a Bob or an Alice, then the conditional probability that a criminal is stopped should equal the unconditional probability, when we go back and look at the data.

@98 – And again you focus on the symptoms of what happens when you set off a powder keg.

Rather than defuse the kegs, or put the spark out, you determine that the problem that the world is that things burn when gunpowder is around, and work to change physical laws.

@97–In my mind, all I see are Europe’s great cities in flames and all I hear is the cry of a million aborted foetuses (maybe mixed in with some Wagner). Everyday, I get closer to the edge, and my beautiful guns…

@96 Quasi-respectable? You give them too much credit. They do however have access to national and international platforms from which to broadcast their fantasy version of the world, which isn’t the same thing as respectable.

84. Chaise Guevara

If you’re about to say “ah, but they’re not equal, because Bob is male and thus twice as likely to commit crime”, you’re misusing statistics. Bob either commits crime or he doesn’t; he’s 0% criminal, not 10% criminal. Individuals are not weighted averages of their demographic.

But Bob is actually a cat. The police do not know if he is carrying a weapon or not carrying a weapon until they open the box and look inside. They do not know until they check.

There is also another factor you’re ignoring. What if the police have a nifty little computer. And it tells them that knife crime is concentrated in one or two streets which happen to contain four pubs, and it is most likely to occur between the hours of 11 pm and 2 am. So they flood those streets with police officers at those hours and search everyone. But it so happens that there are twice as many men out drinking as women. What liberal shibboleth have the police violated? Do you object to this?

In the same way, police are most likely to patrol inner cities. Live in the burbs and you won’t see a police officer for months on end. When you do they will be chatting or sleeping or eating in their cars. They won’t talk to anyone much less search them. It so happens that inner cities, and especially inner city Estates are disproportionately inhabited by what sort of people?

@ 85 vimothy

I was going to answer your post in detail, but your fundamental error can be summed up here:

“Since Bob commits crimes at twice the rate as Alice…”

I’m sorry, but you simply don’t understand how statistics and probability work. Trends do not transfer onto individuals. If Bob commits crime at twice the rate as Alice, then everyone in the UK earns the average UK salary, as this is the average for their national demographic! See the problem?

Bob and Alice both commit no crimes, so the claim that he commits crime at twice the rate she does is utterly ludicruous. Please go back and actually read my post before replying to it, and pay attention to the bit where I make a distinction between individuals and groups. The key point is this: “Individuals are not weighted averages of their demographic.”

I assume that you would be happy with a system that puts everyone in jail for a time based on the average crimes committed by their demographic? It uses the exact same (bent) logic you’re employing here.

@ 88 SMFS

“Sorry but which of those conditions I listed do we lack in Britain? Are you asserting we do not have the rule of law? We do not hold regular elections? We are not a democracy? We do not have a heart-felt commitment to ending all forms of discrimination? Which?”

That last one. I did actually say that already.

“I am not trying to sweep people’s concerns under the carpet. I am pointing out that they are specious. A different issue. No one is voiceless. They all have a vote.”

Please explain how having a vote in a constituency where only one candidate has a chance of winning, in a country where news companies are allowed to lie until they’re blue in the face as a way of conning you into voting for their preferred party, translates into having a “voice” in the political sense?

“There may be discrimination but if you can’t see the serious efforts we have made to end it – and the massive progress that has been made – you’re wilfully blind. Worse than that really. ”

We have made serious efforts to end it, but there’s still a lot of it about, perpetrated by many people (often with the backing of the law). So I think “serious and heartfelt” is pushing it somewhat.

“Stronger than expected simply means a slight sting with their slap on the wrist, rather than any actual punishment.”

Because 2-4 years in jail is a “slap on the wrist” for an off-colour joke. I’m sure if you were handed a 4-year sentence for saying something that offended some moral guardian, you’d think “Whew! Got off light!”

“They know they won’t be caught – and by and large they have not been”

Hard to see how to fix this without removing presumption of innocence, or dedicating a lot more resources to police/CCTV.

” – and they know that they will not serve any real jail time.”

See above!

“The few sentences will get big headlines and then they will be quietly released.”

We’ll see.

“Even so, stronger than expected? Of course they expected no real punishment at all. That is what all their experience told them would happen. That is how the police actually behaved at the time.”

I meant stronger than expected based on normal sentencing, not based on chances of prosecution.

“I think punishment should mean something people don’t like. Prison is not punishment any more in Britain.”

Oh, balls. If prison is so fine and dandy, why are the only people who don’t try to avoid it a) long-term convicts who have forgotten how to live on the outside and b) possibly tramps who are genuinely better off there than on the street?

“No, we don’t execute people because we prefer young girls to be kidnapped, raped and murdered by repeat offenders than to take the tough decisions that are necessary to protect the weak and vulnerable.”

Gosh, we’ve suddenly jumped from talking about excuting ALL criminals to talking about executing repeat rapists! Watch as the goalposts boogie merrily across the pitch!

You dropped this; I think it’s your intellectual honesty…

@ 103 SMFS

“But Bob is actually a cat. The police do not know if he is carrying a weapon or not carrying a weapon until they open the box and look inside. They do not know until they check.

There is also another factor you’re ignoring.”

Ignoring? I already said that profiling allowed more effecient use of police resources. I couldn’t hold that opinion if I didn’t accept that, from the police’s POV, Bob is twice as likely to be carrying contraband than Alice. My point is that this probability is based on the incomplete information held by the police, not a statement about Bob and Alice themselves.

“What if the police have a nifty little computer. And it tells them that knife crime is concentrated in one or two streets which happen to contain four pubs, and it is most likely to occur between the hours of 11 pm and 2 am. So they flood those streets with police officers at those hours and search everyone. But it so happens that there are twice as many men out drinking as women. What liberal shibboleth have the police violated? Do you object to this?”

Probably not, and ditto your next example. The trick is to use profiling to improve use of resources without people being made to feel victimised. If I decide to drink in a pub that has a reputation for being violent, I’m gonna accept that I get searched as a result. I might even appreciate it, as the general search policy makes me safer.

In terms of how it’s likely to be interpreted by the searchee, there’s a world of difference between that, and being searched for the fourth time that year while the police ignore other people walking down the same street who are less black/young/male.

@104 Not only that, but he’s attempting to have his cake and eat it too. He’s put forth 2 contradictory positions:

Position A: The youths that first kicked off the rioting at Mark Duggan’s vigil were acting on a fantastical unreal world view that the police were unfairly descriminating against and targetting them. In much the same way that Anders was acting on a fantastical unreal world view of Cultural Marxism and creeping Islam when he butchered teens trapped on an island.

Position Not-A: The youths of the Tottenham area ARE descriminated against and targeted by the police, and will have experienced much first hand of this, but there’s good statistical reasons for it, so if they don’t like it they can lump it.

I’m sorry, but you simply don’t understand how statistics and probability work.

Lol, well, maybe. I am actually at university studying this stuff, but it is possible that I’ve got this far through sheer luck, I suppose.

If Bob commits crime at twice the rate as Alice, then everyone in the UK earns the average UK salary, as this is the average for their national demographic! See the problem?

Yes. The problem is that you are conflating two different things. An average is not a real anything–it’s just a measure of the central tendency of the distribution of a particular random variable. No one need earn the avergage salary–but, on average, that is the salary that everyone earns.

Averages are statistics that we can use to describe distributions. We can use other statistics of course: the remaining moments and central moments of a particular distribution (like the variance, skewness, kurtosis, etc).

So, on average, Bob commits crime at twice the rate of Alice. This does not necessarily imply that eiher Bob or Alice have ever committed crimes. All we are saying is that on average Bobs commit crimes at twice the rate of Alices (we’re using “Bob” to denote one group and “Alice” to denote another, where the two groups have different crime rates).

Whether Bob has in fact committed a crime is a random variable. What the average tells you is the relative frequency with which Bob commits crime, i.e. it’s the ex ante likelihood that Bob has committed a crime, conditional on the fact that Bob is a member of the group of Bobs.

If you were to ask a random sample of people what their salary is, you would expect that the average answer would be in the ballpark of the population average. On the other hand, if you restricted your survey to memebers of an expensive golf club, then you would not necessarily expect the sample average to apporach the population average.

Imagine asking the question: Do you earn more than the median salary? In the random sample, you would expect about half of the respondants would answer yes, and half no. In the golf club, you would expect most people would say yes.

Similarly, imagine asking the question: Have you commited a crime? You would expect (assuming everyone answers honestly) 10% of Bobs to say yes and 5% of Alices to say yes.

So when we look at the rate at which the police stop and search people, we want to know if the police are stopping people because they are members of a particular group, or just because they suspect that they are involved in some kind of crime.

Now, we know that Bobs commit twice as much crime as Alices. This implies that twice as many Bobs will be stopped by the police, if the police are simply acting in response to criminality and not on the basis of group membership.

In other words, if we go back to the data and we see that the police are stopping the same number of Alices as Bobs, then we’ll be suspicious. Why? Well, because that means that there is a relationship between group membership and chances of being stopped. The police are discriminating against Alices.

We want the police to stop people who are criminals and not harrass decent law abiding citizens. If the police are follwing this rule, then we shoud be able to see that P(person is a criminal | person is stopped and searched) = P(person is a criminal).

If the police stop Alices and Bobs at the same rate then this relationship will not hold, and a criminal Bob will be twice as likely as a criminal Alice to not be stopped and searched.

I will emphasise a second time, that I am not proposing that the police should go out and intentionally stop people at a particular rate. I am saying that, if the police do not stop people on the basis of group membership, but merely on the basis of criminality, then given the relative disparity in crime rates, then they will stop people in the different groups at different rates.

@ 108 vimothy

“Lol, well, maybe. I am actually at university studying this stuff”

That’s as maybe, but you’re still making a major mistake here.

“Yes. The problem is that you are conflating two different things. An average is not a real anything”

Um, that would be MY point. The average chance of a bloke committing crime is not the same as the odds of a single bloke committing a crime.

Seriously, if the above doesn’t make sense to you I don’t believe that you’ve been studying this very long.

“So, on average, Bob commits crime at twice the rate of Alice. This does not necessarily imply that eiher Bob or Alice have ever committed crimes.”

The above is a total logical nonsense.

” All we are saying is that on average Bobs commit crimes at twice the rate of Alices (we’re using “Bob” to denote one group and “Alice” to denote another, where the two groups have different crime rates).”

But that’s not all you’re saying! You’re conflating that with the idea that Bob, singular, commits crimes at twice the rate of Alice, singular. In other words, you’ve fallen into this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy .

“Whether Bob has in fact committed a crime is a random variable.”

Random how?

“What the average tells you is the relative frequency with which Bob commits crime, i.e. it’s the ex ante likelihood that Bob has committed a crime, conditional on the fact that Bob is a member of the group of Bobs. ”

See above.

“If you were to ask a random sample of people what their salary is [..] Similarly, imagine asking the question: Have you commited a crime? You would expect (assuming everyone answers honestly) 10% of Bobs to say yes and 5% of Alices to say yes.”

Aware of all this.

“We want the police to stop people who are criminals and not harrass decent law abiding citizens. If the police are follwing this rule, then we shoud be able to see that P(person is a criminal | person is stopped and searched) = P(person is a criminal).

If the police stop Alices and Bobs at the same rate then this relationship will not hold, and a criminal Bob will be twice as likely as a criminal Alice to not be stopped and searched.”

Hang on. Are you talking about police stopping people they know to be criminal (or at least are acting in a way that would justify it, e.g. hiding their hands behind their backs when they see the cops)? Because if so, yes, there would be a problem if police were stopping as many Alices as Bobs.

However, as far as I was aware we’re discussion “random” stop and search. For example, police are instructed to search 12 out of the next 100 people who walk down the street. On the basis of gender alone, not individual behaviour, they only stop Bobs as this improves their statistical chances of catching a criminal. Alternatively, they stop 8 Bobs and 4 Alices as they can claim (falsely) that this proves that they are being fair. Either way, this is profiling, with its attendant pros and cons.

“I will emphasise a second time, that I am not proposing that the police should go out and intentionally stop people at a particular rate. I am saying that, if the police do not stop people on the basis of group membership, but merely on the basis of criminality, then given the relative disparity in crime rates, then they will stop people in the different groups at different rates.”

Yes, no argument there – but when did you actually say that?

vimothy,

How can we mitigate the risk of riots in general? Maybe… we can mitigate some ‘risk factors’. Put simply, if people aren’t dissatisfied with The Man they aren’t going to riot because they are dissatisfied with The Man…

Again this assumption.

Well, it seems to me a reasonable assumption that if someone isn’t pissed off with A they aren’t going to kick off about A because they are pissed of with A. They might kick off because of other things, of course.

Breivik is also pissed off with The Man. Comparatively, he did a lot more damage. Perhaps we should make some concessions towards white nationalists, just for the purposes of risk management–the marginal pay-off must be orders of magnitude greater, right?

Now, you claim that Breivik’s grievances were all fantasy, whereas the rioters had (some) grievances rooted in reality. But this is clearly an ideological reading, it seems to me, that confuses is with ought. Breivik was not so completely out to lunch. Like any fanatic, and indeed, just like the rioters, there were several parts fantasy to several parts reality in there. In fact, it was so easy to find quasi-respectable people with similar views to Breivik that shortly after the massacre this very website generate a whole slew of articles denouncing them as contributing factors to Breivik’s sense of grievance.

It’s also easy to see how concessions could be made that might satisfy some of the more reasonable elements in the white nationalist underground (assuming such a thing exists). For instance, deporting Muslims. This would be grossly immoral, of course–but then, trying to buy off groups of people who have just sacked and burned your capital city under the threat of more violence is not exactly a noble cause either.

I would hope it would go without saying here that some means of decreasing dissatisfaction would be inappropriate. We could shoot every person who says he is dissatisfied and we would eventually end up with only the people who claim to be satisfied (if there are any people left). You seem to be approaching this in a sort of binary or absolutist way. I don’t know how we can (without restraining him beforehand) mitigate the risk of someone like Breivik doing what he did, in the political sense of this discussion. There is no way of getting rid of all risk of a person deciding to murder others.

As for “buying off rioters”, as if I have suggested giving them money or iPads instead of the more measure language I’ve used, it seems a bit intellectually dishonest.

And aren’t there also people who contributed to and justified the rioters sense of grievance? Indeed there were. They weren’t sitting at home thinking this stuff up between games of Grand Theft Auto and huffs of gas. Your response to the rioters is to say, violence bad, but let’s see what we can do. Your response to Breivik is to say, we will make no concessions to your crazy programme on the basis of violence or the threat of. The latter response is the just and correct one. But it should be applied equally regardless of what you consider to be the relative merits of the implied political programme.

My ‘response to the rioters’ is along the lines of, ultimately people are responsible for the decisions they make, I am not denying agency, if you are proved guilty of committing a crime you ought to be punished; at the same time, ‘society’, the government, whatever, should look at whether there are ‘legitimate’ grievances and, if there are, what we can do, if anything, about them.

sorry, blockquote fail there.

Chaise,

Um, that would be MY point.

I’m think that you’re still a bit confused. We are looking at the general tendecy of the police when stopping people, so we are necessarily looking at conditional and unconditional expectations.

The average chance of a bloke committing crime is not the same as the odds of a single bloke committing a crime.

I’m afraid that this really doesn’t make sense to me.

What do you mean, “average chance of a bloke committing a crime”? Given a randomly sampled person, then the probability that they have commited a crime is the population expectation. That’s what random sampling means.

“So, on average, Bob commits crime at twice the rate of Alice. This does not necessarily imply that eiher Bob or Alice have ever committed crimes.”

The above is a total logical nonsense.

Of course it isn’t, it’s totally straightforward. I’m saying that Bobs in general commit crimes at a given rate, but this does not mean that any particular Bob has ever commited a crime, or that every Bob has commited 0.1 crimes or what have you.

Similarly, you, as a daring fighter pilot, have a much higher chance of dying in a ball of flame than me–but this does not imply that you have ever died in a ball of flame. It just means that the expectation of death in flames conditional on daring fighter pilot status is higher than the unconditional expectation of death in flames.

But that’s not all you’re saying! You’re conflating that with the idea that Bob, singular, commits crimes at twice the rate of Alice, singular.

I don’t think you’re following the argument. You need to think carefully about when we are looking at “Bob” the individual and “Bob” the group.

As I said above, “Bob” has a crime rate, which is the simply the expected crime rate of a randomly sampled individual, conditional on their being a member of the set of Bobs. The average is not a person–it is a descriptive statistic.

If take we the population of Bobs, and determine the criminality of each individual Bob, then we can derive the average or population expectation, which is just the relative frequency of criminality in the set of Bobs.

ON AVERAGE Bob commits crime at twice the rate of Alice, because Bob is a member of the set of Bobs, and the probability that any given person commits crime, conditional on their membership of the set of Bobs is twice that of the probability thaet any give person commits crime, conditional on their membership of the set of Alices.

That is what it means to say that (members of the set of) Bobs commit crimes at twice the rate of (members of the set of) Alices.

Any given member of either set might have commited crime, or not commmited crime. We don’t know ex ante because it’s a random variable. As in, random. That’s why we’re using probability theory and statistics.

This means that an individual Bob might well never have commited any crimes. And an indiviual Alice might have commited millions! An average doesn’t tell you whether any one observation will be one thing or another. We use these averages to describe the behaviour of variables about which we are uncertain.

And we only know that Bobs are commiting twice as much crime as Alices when we go back and look at the data.

Random how?

Random in the sense of uncertain. Random in the sense of not deterministic. Random in the sense that if you stopped “Bob” (that is, a member of the set of Bobs) on the street and searched him, you would not know before the fact if he was engaged in something untoward. The average only tells you the relative frequency that members of the set of Bobs commit crimes.

Hang on. Are you talking about police stopping people they know to be criminal (or at least are acting in a way that would justify it, e.g. hiding their hands behind their backs when they see the cops)? Because if so, yes, there would be a problem if police were stopping as many Alices as Bobs.

I’m saying that if the police stop and search criminals and not merely members of the public at random, then there should be a relationship between the probability that a peprson gets stopped and the probability that a person is a criminal. Since the probability that any given member of the set of Bobs is a criminal is higher than the probability that any given Alice is a criminal, members of the set of Bobs should get stopped more frequently.

we’re discussion “random” stop and search. For example, police are instructed to search 12 out of the next 100 people who walk down the street.

What we were discussing was why members of different groups get stopped and searched by the police at different rates. I’m saying that it is quite obvious that some of that variation will be explained by different rates of criminality between groups.

Other people were suggesting that the police should deliberately aim to stop people at the same rate regardless of group membershiop. So I have explained that this implies that the likelihood that criminals will be stopped by the police will then be determined (amongst other things) by group membership (assuming different criminality rates). In other words, this will not result in a fairer system, unless by fairer you mean: criminals who a membersa of one arbitrary group will be treated differently to criminals of another.

Yes, no argument there – but when did you actually say that?

It is implied in everything I have written, because I was trying to explain why different groups will get stopped at different rates depending on their relative criminality. It is the whole point of what I’ve been saying.

But I spelled it out in a comment @99:

“Let me just clarify something: I’m not saying that the police should go out and deliberately try to stop twice as many Bobs as Alices. I’m saying that, if the police are doing their job properly, and stopping people on the basis of their criminality, and doing so independently of whether they are a Bob or an Alice, then the conditional probability that a criminal is stopped should equal the unconditional probability, when we go back and look at the data.“

“I’m think that you’re still a bit confused. We are looking at the general tendecy of the police when stopping people, so we are necessarily looking at conditional and unconditional expectations.”

We’re looking at how said tendency relates to individual circumstances, and it’s the relationship between the two that I’m trying to explain here.

“I’m afraid that this really doesn’t make sense to me.

What do you mean, “average chance of a bloke committing a crime”? Given a randomly sampled person, then the probability that they have commited a crime is the population expectation. That’s what random sampling means.”

The probability of them having committed a crime is the same as the population average from the POV of someone who only knows that the individual is a member of the population. However, whether or not that individual has in reality committed a crime is not the same as the average (in fact, it’s not a probability at all, it’s a yes/no question).

So if the only thing you know about Bob is that he is male, then from your POV there is a 10% chance that he has commited a crime. However, reality doesn’t bend to fit the information available to you. In reality, Bob has either committed a crime or he hasn’t – in this case, he hasn’t.

Probability is a statement about the information available to the person making the probability assessment, not a statement about the thing being assessed (the possible existence of true random number generators etc withstanding).

“Of course it isn’t, it’s totally straightforward. I’m saying that Bobs in general commit crimes at a given rate, but this does not mean that any particular Bob has ever commited a crime, or that every Bob has commited 0.1 crimes or what have you.

Similarly, you, as a daring fighter pilot, have a much higher chance of dying in a ball of flame than me–but this does not imply that you have ever died in a ball of flame. It just means that the expectation of death in flames conditional on daring fighter pilot status is higher than the unconditional expectation of death in flames.”

OK, I wasn’t clear that you were talking about future behaviour rather than past behaviour. But you’d still be out, as the fact that Bob has never before committed a crime presumably has some bearing on his future likelihood of doing so.

Do you agree that, if Bob has never committed a crime, the probability of Bob HAVING COMMITTED a crime is 0%, regardless of what percentage of Bobs have committed a crime?

“ON AVERAGE Bob commits crime at twice the rate of Alice, because Bob is a member of the set of Bobs, and the probability that any given person commits crime, conditional on their membership of the set of Bobs is twice that of the probability thaet any give person commits crime, conditional on their membership of the set of Alices. ”

Those conditionals fall by the wayside in the face of the KNOWN FACT that Bob does not commit crime. You have to update your estimates when new information arrives. Otherwise the cat in the box is half-alive and half-dead even after you open the box, so to speak.

I am about to flip a fair coin. You say “there is a 50/50 chance of the coin coming up heads”. The coin comes up tails. Do you look at the coin and say “there is a 50/50 chance that the coin currently shows heads”, or “the coin currently shows tails”?

“This means that an individual Bob might well never have commited any crimes. And an indiviual Alice might have commited millions! An average doesn’t tell you whether any one observation will be one thing or another. We use these averages to describe the behaviour of variables about which we are uncertain.”

And we only know that Bobs are commiting twice as much crime as Alices when we go back and look at the data. ”

Which is what I’ve been trying to tell you for the past umpteen posts! “Bobs commit twice as much crime as Alices” =/= “Bob commits twice as much crime as Alice”. Do you accept this now?

“Random in the sense of uncertain. Random in the sense of not deterministic. Random in the sense that if you stopped “Bob” (that is, a member of the set of Bobs) on the street and searched him, you would not know before the fact if he was engaged in something untoward.”

Again only true from the POV of the police, who know only that Bob is male. From the POV of us, knowing Bob is innocent, it’s certain.

“I’m saying that if the police stop and search criminals and not merely members of the public at random, then there should be a relationship between the probability that a peprson gets stopped and the probability that a person is a criminal. Since the probability that any given member of the set of Bobs is a criminal is higher than the probability that any given Alice is a criminal, members of the set of Bobs should get stopped more frequently.”

Yep, fine.

“What we were discussing was why members of different groups get stopped and searched by the police at different rates. I’m saying that it is quite obvious that some of that variation will be explained by different rates of criminality between groups.”

Certainly, but presumably not all of it unless police never search someone unless they see them a) committing a crime or b) acting suspiciously beyond being a member of a demographic.

“Other people were suggesting that the police should deliberately aim to stop people at the same rate regardless of group membershiop.”

I’d agree with that, probably, but only insofar as police are stopping people at random (i.e. unconnected to personal behaviour).

“It is implied in everything I have written, because I was trying to explain why different groups will get stopped at different rates depending on their relative criminality. It is the whole point of what I’ve been saying. ”

Except you’ve been claiming that Bob commits more crime than Alice even though we know he doesn’t. It’s hard for me to find implied logic when the overt statements are totally illogical.

“But I spelled it out in a comment @99:”

So you did. In a comment buried in the middle of the thread that wasn’t addressed to me. Not very helpful.

It’s very easy to lie with statistics when you’re talking about demographics. If you have 1 black man who commits 70% of all burglaries in a given area, and six white guys who commit the other 30%, it is still totally accurate to say that “70% of all burglaries are committed by black men”, despite population wise there being more white burglars.

Cylux,

It’s very easy to lie with statistics when you’re talking about demographics. If you have 1 black man who commits 70% of all burglaries in a given area, and six white guys who commit the other 30%, it is still totally accurate to say that “70% of all burglaries are committed by black men”, despite population wise there being more white burglars

I’d like to add that this emphasis on ethnicity (which is understandable from an official statistics viewpoint given the history) seems harmful if there is an absence of discussion of control for other factors.

The same statistics could for example say there is one man of low socio-economic status who commits 70% of burglaries and six men of higher socio-economic status who commit 30% of burglaries.

Also, I think it’s important to remember that people aren’t emotionless drones with an understanding of statistics and probability, the only difference between them being that some commit twice as much crime as the rest. What seems a fair outcome to a computer might not seem a fair outcome to a person who perceives that he is stopped more often than his peers just because of his skin colour.

Chaise,

However, whether or not that individual has in reality committed a crime is not the same as the average (in fact, it’s not a probability at all, it’s a yes/no question).

Well, obviously. This why I’ve repeatedly stressed the ex ante nature of probabilities and the fact that they relate to random variables. If you know already something (for instance whether a particular Bob has committed a crime), then it is not subject to uncertainty and doesn’t have a probability distribution.

The fact that Bob has never before committed a crime presumably has some bearing on his future likelihood of doing so.