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This article draws on selected explanatory accounts of rioting that occurred in England in 2011 for the purpose of illustrating the ways in which scholarly critiques frame quite different senses of what kind of "crisis" the riots represented. On one side, the riots are understood within a "race and policing" frame placing them in a line of continuity with events across time and space and in an ongoing crisis of racial subjugation. In direct contrast, another side treats the riots as a crisis of post-politics, in which nihilism has replaced purposive political action. While different types of politics are centred in both approaches, they differ remarkably in relation to racism, with the latter treating race as epiphenomenal. These frames are instances of how critical scholarly understandings draw on events, and it is argued they miss potentially far-reaching senses of "crisis" that can be drawn out of some aspects of rioting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the situational dynamics of the 2011 London Riots. The empirical contribution is to challenge the dominant explanation of the riots as an outbreak of ‘criminal opportunism’. I use the Metropolitan Police record of all riot-related crimes in London to test several hypotheses and show that this ‘criminal opportunism’ theory cannot account for the riots’ spatial patterning. This opens space for alternative explanatory mechanisms. I then use video footage and testimonies of events on the ground to examine the interactions which made up the London Riots. These suggest that the riots were, in part, a way for people to stake a claim to the public spaces in which they lived, toreclaim the everyday. Theoretically, this builds on Randall Collins’s ‘micro-situational’ approach to violence but extends it by embedding historical and structural factors into that micro-perspective. Specifically, the emotional dynamics of these riot interactions cannot be understood without acknowledging participants’ pre-existing expectations of the police and of the everyday places of the riot. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2011, the killing of a Black man by a police officer triggered violent riots across England. In a context where ethnic minorities are rarely openly blamed, we examined the lens through which the events were interpreted in the official discourses of the British Prime Minister. A thematic content analysis (Study 1) revealed that, without explicitly blaming ethnic minorities, the discourses built on antagonistic normative references opposing a virtuous majority to threatening minorities. Then, based on online survey data of self-declared Londoners (N = 223) during the riots, we analyzed (Study 2) how agreement with the discourses related to individuals' ethnocentrism and their understanding of the causes underlying the events. Results of regression analyses showed how agreement with the discourses related to blaming ethnic diversity for the riots and to higher ethnocentrism, especially among individuals least likely to discriminate against minorities (i.e., low in social dominance orientation). Agreement with the discourses was also linked to reduced blame of authorities. To conclude, we discuss the mobilization potential of political discourses on ingroup virtue and outgroup threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the Arab Spring and Occupy to the London riots and student tuition fee protests, the disordered crowd has re-emerged as a focal point of anxiety for law makers. The paper examines two recent cases where the UK courts have thought about crowds. In Austin, the House of Lords connected the crowd to an idea of human nature. This essentialist rendering placed the crowd within an old analytical register where it is understood to release a primordial violence. In Bauer, the Administrative Court utilised a very different sense of the 'crowdness' of the crowd to uphold the conviction of UK Uncut activists for aggravated trespass. In their novelty and difference, these two mutually exclusive senses of the crowd open an essential question of the relation between law and society. This paper introduces the 'Law of Crowds' as a distinctive way to understand the questions of protest, revolt and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article begins with an overview of what is implied in the notion of the 'post-political' before looking closely at post-political interpretations of the 2011 London riots. It presents a critique of the restricted sense of political subjectivity in such accounts. It demonstrates how participation in the riots and their aftermath may be seen as indicative of an embryonic form of urban politics that works with and against the post-political city. This discussion is illuminated by an analysis of the discursive space of London hip-hop which reveals an ironic, complex and reflexive dialogue about identity, justice and politics that is far removed from the caricature offered by 'strong' interpretations of the post-political subject. This is then linked to readings of the post-political city that place a welcome stress not only on the evacuation of the political dimension from the city, but also on the opportunities for the re-emergence of the proto-political. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of a crisis on small firms. Taking a phenomenological research approach, qualitative interviews were conducted to capture the experiences of small businesses directly affected by looting, vandalism and/or arson in the London 2011 riots. This study adds to the literature on crisis management by highlighting the different types of losses encountered by small businesses following a crisis and the role individual owner–managers, businesses and the wider community play in enhancing or minimizing losses. A model is developed to capture those factors that influence which small businesses were vulnerable or resilient to the riots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dream of people discovering they have crime-fighting super-powers is the stuff of Hollywood movies like ‘Superman’ and the ‘X-Men’. But the startling fact about the individuals known as super recognisers is that their powers are real – they are literally living the dream. These people are supremely adept at facial recognition and their abilities have been harnessed by police to track the criminals behind the 2011 London riots and 2015 Cologne sex attacks. Yet in an era when humans are used to being bested by machines – witness the IBM super-computer that beat chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov and the Google program that recently humbled the world champion of the intuitive game ‘Go’ – the abilities of super recognisers have outshone current biometric facial recognition systems, raising questions about the technology. So what can developers of face recognition systems learn from them? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The riots that took place in England in August 2011 have widely been described as destructive, senseless and without purpose. This article, taking inspiration from Michel Foucault's later work on revolt as counter-conduct, argues for a new understanding of how to read political expression and thereby calls for the riots to be thought differently, as a form of counter-conduct. This demands a new appreciation for the possibilities of revolt where spontaneous, impulsive, mundane and non-spectacular events like riots can be construed as political rather than purely criminal. It also opens up possibilities for how we might understand the ethos of the “revolting subject”. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the riots that took place in London, England in 2011. Topics discussed include the psychological, economic, financial and political problems experienced by individual protestors due to which the riots took place; and the causes and the issues that resulted in the London riots which were inequality and injustice.

Thousands rioted in London in August 2011, with the police losing control of parts of the city for four days. This event was not an ethnic riot: participants were ethnically diverse and did not discriminate in choosing targets for looting or destruction. Whereas the sociological literature has focused on variation in rioting across cities, we examine variation within London by mapping the residential addresses of 1,620 rioters--who were subsequently arrested and charged--on to 25,022 neighborhoods. Our findings challenge the orthodoxy that rioting is not explained by deprivation or by disorganization. Rioters were most likely to come from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Rioters also tended to come from neighborhoods where ethnic fractionalization was high, and from areas with few charitable organizations. Political grievances also emerge as important. Rioters were more likely to come from boroughs where the police had previously been perceived as disrespectful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The London Riots of August 2011 were notable for the prominence of closed-circuit television (CCTV) images of offenders in investigation and prosecution, and in social media and news publicity. The systematic use of CCTV footage in criminal investigations was not new, however. London's Metropolitan Police had pioneered specialist units tasked with acting upon image evidence in the five years prior to the riots, an approach deemed so effective it was termed the ‘Third Forensics’. This article discusses the significance of this claim and its implications for the justice system. The use of images in the investigation of the riots was highly effective, suggesting claims for substantially improved impact in investigation and prosecution are valid, and earlier scepticism regarding both utility and surveillance society agendas in public area CCTV studies was justified. Systematic procedural use of CCTV footage is not new, however, as demonstrated following riots in Vancouver, Canada, and earlier in Bradford, UK. Furthermore, identification in the Third Forensics is eyewitness recognition, and not scientifically or technologically similar to fingerprints or DNA. The article suggests this difference affects risks of prejudice and miscarriages of justice, and profiling of individuals and social categories images appear to represent. The article concludes that while forensic investigation of CCTV images may not meet scientific criteria of a third forensic discipline, it defines nascent development in police investigation, where improvements in procedure have combined with proliferating CCTV systems and social media, leading to a novel set of circumstances raising a number of unexplored issues of such significance that ‘Third Forensics’ is a suitable term to use to symbolise them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A number of commentators have suggested that the riots in England in August 2011 were distinctive because of the character and extent of the looting that took place. In doing so, they have argued that the nature of modern consumer capitalism should be placed front and centre of any explanation of the disorder. While concurring with elements of such arguments, we depart from such analyses in three ways. First, we argue that it is important not to overstate the extent to which the 2011 riots were a departure from previous outbreaks of civil disorder--violent consumerism having a quite lengthy history. Second, using testimony from those involved, we argue that a focus on looting risks ignoring both the political character and the violence involved in the riots. Finally, and relatedly, we suggest that the focus on consumption potentially simplifies the nature of the looting itself by underestimating its political and expressive characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time when urban space is considered central to understanding how multicultural societies cohere, this paper examines how the urban and the nation are related. To do so, the paper focuses upon Birmingham, UK, which has been presented as a testing ground for national responses to difference and as a model for other European cities. Drawing on narratives of city boosterism, urban policy, local and national news articles, academic writing and resident accounts, the paper deals with three inter-related concerns. First, with discussions on how the city responds and adapts to national framings of diversity and its socio-political conditions of possibility, second, with claims that the city might be understood as epitomising the state of the nation and third, with questions concerning how Birmingham might actively work to shape, challenge or re-write understandings of the nation. Drawing on recent work urban experimentation, the paper asks what Birmingham's position as a laboratory for new social imaginaries and ways of belonging might mean, both for the city and its residents, and for national policy on cultural diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within hours of the outset of unrest in the August 2011 English Riots, the government asserted that they were the doings of 'criminal gangs'. In doing so, government officials and journalistic commentators cited television images of rioting and plundering youths. Although this assertion was subsequently abandoned, it reflected an on-going process: the criminalization of youth in Britain. The recycled images of flames and hooded teenagers came to serve as the proof of youth 'gone bad'. This paper explores both the actions supposedly captured in the images depicting the riots and the discourses surrounding the reproduction of those images. It seeks to connect the youth politics of the everyday-especially the problems of being ignored as political subjects-to the formal political structures that rely on youth to be socially unruly on one hand and disciplined consumers on the other. Segments of British youth are cast out, seen as unneeded or unwanted in this disciplinary project and constitute what I call here a 'lumpen-consumerate'. The paper concludes with a comparative analysis of the consumer images that both discipline young people and serve as a model for framing the unrest. The paper builds upon Deleuze, Badiou, Bourdieu, Bauman and others in order to examine how spontaneous, uncoordinated action came to be read through mass media spectacle as dismissible and intolerable images of 'criminal gangs' to be policed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically interrogates the assumption that young people operate at the ‘cutting edge’ of social change. Arguing that the ideological impact of consumption on young people’s everyday lives is such that young people are almost obliged to reinforce the status quo rather than to undermine it, the article considers the impact of young people’s status as consumer citizens. Using the London riots of 2011 riots as a means of briefly reflecting upon the degree to which young people are in opposition to the consumer society, the argument is made that youth researchers have tended to romanticize young people’s relationship to social change and that this is the result of their own sense of political disillusionment in what is essentially a consumer society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Significant riots occurred in London in August 2011. The riots took place in highly localised geographical areas, with crime going up hugely in the affected sub-wards. The criminal justice response was to make sentencing for rioters much more severe. We show a significant drop in riot crimes across London in the six months after the riots, consistent with a deterrence effect from the tougher sentencing. More evidence of general deterrence comes from the observation that crime also fell in the post-riot aftermath in areas where rioting did not take place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role played by social media during the occurrence of riots in England on August 6, 2011 that was triggered by the police shooting of African-American Mark Duggan. Topics discussed include how digital technologies affect the relations between social actors who seek to enact social change, the impact of social media communication on the ways in which the riots were enacted, and the rise of big data analytics and how it has been used to address political unrest and the issues of power, trusts, and emotions .

This article is meant to emphasize that modern societies allow discrepancies between social and professional categories that result into a peripheral way of living even if the categories involved are not physically located at the peripheries of the cities. Economic inequalities and poverty, lack of equal opportunities, malfunctioning systems and political abuses resulted into social discontent that brought people in the streets in many countries in Europe during the first decade of the 21st century. Protests were interpreted and reflected by the media in a twofold way: while in some countries they were interpreted as expression of democratic rights, in other countries they were seen as an unacceptable, violent way to ask for social rights. In Western and Eastern European countries such protests caused concern. Armed forces confronted and annihilated the actions of the masses in the streets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to investigate the current response to the riots in the UK in August 2011 by comparing and contrasting the political and institutional factors with the reaction to the riots that occurred in Brixton and Toxteth 1981 and those in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham in 2001. The article focuses on the changes which have occurred within the probation service over that period and by interviewing twelve frontline practitioners, seeks to gain an insight into the ways these transformations reflect wider differences within the role of probation, the community, political and government attitudes and the ways this is communicated within the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Surprisingly little research has examined the localised diffusion of riots within cities. In this paper, we investigate such patterns during the 2011 London riots, and consider how they changed as police numbers increased. Understanding how offences spread in space and time can provide insights regarding the mechanisms of contagion, and of the risk of events spreading between contiguous areas. Using spatial–temporal grids of varying resolution, and a Monte Carlo simulation, we compare observed patterns with those expected assuming the timing and location of events are independent. In particular, we differentiate between four space–time signatures: “flashpoints” of disorder which appear out of nowhere, “containment” whereby already affected areas experience further events, “escalation” whereby rioting continues in affected areas and spreads to those nearby, and “relocation” whereby the disorder moves from one locality to those adjacent. During the first half of the disorder, fewer counts of relocation diffusion were observed than expected, but patterns of containment, escalation, and flashpoints were all more prominent. For the second half of the disorder, when police capacity increased roughly three-fold, observed patterns did not differ from expectation. Our results show support for theories of spatial contagion, and suggest that there was a degree of coordination amongst rioters. They also show that police activity did not just suppress rioting, but dampened the influence of contagion, without displacement. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Whilst online social networking has been used successfully for many years by all strata of the world's population, its use to ferment and prevent civil disturbances is a relatively new phenomenon. It is clear that the way in which online social networking sites are being used is evolving, and that changing user perceptions of online privacy may impact on the ability of the law enforcement community to adapt to new methods of monitoring and evidence gathering. This paper focuses primarily on the London riots of August 2011, and as such discusses legal issues from a UK perspective. However, the matters discussed are of relevance worldwide, with reference made to similar events outside the UK, to show that what occurred in London was not an isolated incident, or a quirk of the UK social networking scene. This paper explores what occurred, the platforms that were used and how they were used, and the legal framework in which investigations took place. It examines the use of social networking to organise rioters, support community defence, and shape the response of law enforcement agencies such as the police, government and the courts. It concludes that there is significant potential for problems of this type to occur in the future, which will require the evolution of law enforcement methods and procedures, and could change the way in which the law enforcement community utilise e-Government systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on his experience of attending three events including conference following London, England 2011 riots and mentions that conference featured topic riots were evidence of a feral underclass and a broken society, and the documentary film "Riot from Wrong."

The author reflects on collisions, coalitions and riotous subjects by taking reference to London, England 2011 riots and mentions that identity politics needs to explore inscription of difference on the body.

The author discusses his understanding of the duality and tension that exist in Brixton, England in the months leading to the August 2011 riots, which is derived from his participation in riots, and mentions how he encountered the word gentrification on a street after school while walking home.

The author analyses August 2011 London riots, which had emotional impact on her, and mentions the criticism of police public order tactics, the advent of police and crime commissioners, and evidence of serious police misconduct.

This paper locates responses to the 2011 Tottenham riots within a historical analysis of planning, regeneration and the politics of community participation in the London Borough of Haringey. It examines understandings of the role of such participation and related recommendations within three 2012 reports: North London Citizens, an alliance of mostly faith organizations, The Tottenham Community Panel established by Haringey Council and the Riots, Communities and Victims Panel set up by Parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: This viewpoint looks at the 2011 London riots, and in particular interprets them against a discussion of their urban location. In contrast to previous riots, which generally have happened either in urban centres or urban margins, the London riots happened in the everyday areas of the city, along borderlines between areas of different social inequality. The article centres on riots being seen as a magnification of the ordinary rather than an outburst of the extraordinary, and then discusses the spatial and social implications of this interpretation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Specialist anti-social behaviour units are common within social housing providers, with many established in response to the policies of the New Labour governments of 1997-2010. These units now find themselves operating in a different political and financial environment. Following the English riots of 2011, the Coalition government, whilst imposing budgetary cuts across the public sector, called on social housing providers to intensify their role in tackling disorder. This article explores the habitus or working cultures within anti-social behaviour units post-New Labour. It does so through empirical research conducted in the aftermath of the English riots. The research finds that practitioners view their work as a core function of social housing provision. They have developed an understanding of human behaviour, which crosses the criminal and social policy fields with a wide skillset to match. A number of factors including national policy, community expectations, and multi-partnership engagement influence their dynamic working culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the course of five days in August 2011, destructive riots spread throughout England. his paper examines the political consequences of these riots. It investigates how the riots opened up a space for political debate and action, exploring how actors in journalism, research, and policymaking interacted to construct the meaning of the public disruption and direct the government's response. It finds that a dominant frame emerged early in the debate, constructing the rioters and the community in opposition and establishing the riots as apolitical. In this context, politicians were able to define the riots in terms of two crises: a crisis of public order and a crisis of social breakdown. These early framing activities shaped subsequent research on the causes of the riots and enabled politicians to use the events to advance policy issues of interest to them. his paper suggests that governments do not respond mechanistically to public disruptions. Instead, governments participate actively in a meaning making process and the outcome of this process helps steer the course of political action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of community cohesion is the centrepiece of the policy that was formulated by the British government in response to the urban disturbances in northern English towns during 2001. A number of official reports identified lack of community cohesion as the critical factor. The central argument for community cohesion, the self-segregation thesis, was based on evidence from Bradford. The core idea, parallel lives, was first articulated in the Ouseley Report and incorporated into the Cantle Report and subsequent government reports into the 2001 disturbances. The Commission for Integration and Cohesion widened the concept of community cohesion, which encompassed faith and ethnic groups, to include income and generation, suggesting that the concept was more complex than earlier definitions allowed. However, the increasing concern with terrorism has meant that Muslims remain the focus of debates on cohesion, and a conflation of the community cohesion programme with the government's anti-terrorism strategy is evident in the policy literature. Samad's article is based on research carried out in Bradford to unearth and explore the factors that enhance or undermine community cohesion in those areas where there are established Muslim communities and, additionally, those in which Muslim migrants have recently arrived. It scrutinizes the debate on a number of issues: the difficulties in defining and implementing community cohesion policy, and the issues of segregation, social capital, transnationalism and belonging. This data-driven analysis takes the main areas of debate and tests them with evidence from Bradford. The research findings challenge some of the fundamental assumptions that have informed government policy by providing new evidence that throws light on central aspects of the debate. The need to reflect on these assumptions became more relevant after the English riots of 2011, centred in London, and the subsequent necessity to develop an effective strategy that engages with their root causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the motivations behind the London, England, riots of 2011, with a particular focus on the concept of moral economy. It references the essay "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century" by historian Edward Thompson. The authors draw parallels between Thompson's depictions of food-based riots in the 18th century and the looting of retail stores during the 2011 riots. It is suggested that many participants in the 2011 riots saw themselves as defending customary entitlements and were attacking predatory institutions. Other topics include neoliberalism, justice, and austerity policies.

The article discusses the relationship between episodes of rioting and social unrest in Great Britain in 1981 and 2011. Particular focus is given to the roles of deindustrialization, class conflict, inequality, and neoliberalism in the riots. Details on the historical context of the 1981 riots, including apartheid in South Africa and military conflict in Northern Ireland, are presented. The author also discusses the roles of race relations, gender, and collective memory in the 2011 riots following the shooting death of North London, England, resident Mark Duggan in a conflict with police.

The article discusses the use of social narratives to justify punitive responses by the British government to the 2011 London, England riots. According to the author, the framing of rioters' actions as nonpolitical allowed them to be portrayed as isolated individuals whose choices and moral failings deserved to be punished. It is suggested that this narrative allowed the British government to conceal its own role in the conditions which caused the riots and its own anxieties about race and class. Details on the sentencing of riot participants and of offenders' evictions from social housing are presented.

The article discusses the role of political subjectivity in the 2011 London, England riots and other demonstrations of social unrest. Particular focus is given to an exploration of ways in which the political Left could respond to such demonstrations in order to promote political organizing and change. According to the author, the individualizing tendencies of capitalism present significant obstacles to political change. It is suggested that political organizing must start with acknowledging the conditions and actions of the people and must not be approached with romanticizing or patronizing attitudes. Details on the relationship between service provision and political organizing are also presented.

An interview with Paul Lewis, a special projects editor at the newspaper "The Guardian," is presented in which he discusses the Reading the Riots project, an investigation into the London, England riots of 2011. He describes the influence of a study of the Detroit, Michigan riots of 1967 on the project as well as the process of collaborating with academic researchers. When asked about gang involvement in the riots, he argues that gang participation has been overemphasized.

An introduction is presented to a special section on rioting in London, England and in other English cities in August 2011, with a particular focus on their political implications.

Riots are extreme events, and much of the early research on rioting suggested that the decision making of rioters was far from rational and could only be understood from the perspective of a collective mind. In the current study, we derive and test a set of expectations regarding rioter spatial decision making developed from theories originally intended to explain patterns of urban crime when law and order prevail-crime pattern and social disorganization theory-and consider theories of collective behavior and contagion. To do this, we use data for all riot-related incidents that occurred in London in August 2011 that were detected by the police. Unlike most studies of victimization, we use a random utility model to examine simultaneously how the features of the destinations selected by rioters, the origins of their journeys, and the characteristics of the offenders influence offender spatial decision making. The results demonstrate that rioter target choices were far from random and provide support for all three types of theory, but for crime pattern theory in particular. For example, rioters were more likely to engage in the disorder close to their home location and to select areas that contained routine activity nodes and transport hubs, and they were less likely to cross the Thames River. In terms of contagion, rioters were found to be more likely to target areas that had experienced rioting in the previous 24 hours. From a policy perspective, the findings provide insight into the types of areas that may be most vulnerable during riots and why this is the case, and when particular areas are likely to be at an elevated risk of this type of disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How did the 2011 London disorder affect Londoners? This article presents the findings from a study on the impact of the disorder on Londoners’ attitudes towards the police, sentencing, crime and disorder, using Metropolitan Police Public Attitude Survey (METPAS) data from the weeks before and after the disorder. The findings suggest that while public confidence remained largely steady, confidence is lower (and already was lower prior to the disorder) in those areas of London which were hit hardest by the disorder. We also observed a substantial shift towards greater punitiveness and authoritarian viewpoints following the disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Riots broke out in London on 6th August 2011. Many narratives of the riots describe them as having subsequently intensified within and spread across various parts of the city during the following 4 days and nights before finally petering out. This article addresses two important empirical puzzles stemming from the riots. First, we ask whether the riot events did indeed display distinct spatial patterns and, if so, whether these events spread between locations. Second, we discuss how knowledge of the spatial distribution of these events could influence future analytical research on the topic and how, in turn, this work could inform crime reduction strategies for events of this type. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Data from two large-scale surveys of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) and White young men in London were analysed to measure the extent and impact of police stops on their attitudes to policing and Metropolitan Police Service officers. Using procedural justice theory as a framework for analysis, the perceived presence or absence of trust, respect, neutrality, and voice for those stopped compared with those not stopped in both groups is described. Four main findings are identified: the proportion reporting they had been stopped in the last year was substantially greater for the BME than for the White males; overall, the majority of both BME and White males (whether or not stopped) were positive about policing in London; however, negative and statistically significant differences were noted between those stopped and not stopped for both the BME and White groups. Officers paying due regard to delivering procedural justice is proposed as a preventive to future public disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines public attitudes to the sentencing offences associated with the rioting which took place in England in August 2011. Findings are based on a nationally representative survey of adults. The study uses a randomized split-sample experimental design to compare sentencing preferences for actual offences committed during the riots with preferences for similar offences committed under normal circumstances. The riot sub-sample generally ‘sentenced’ more severely than the non-riot sub-sample, but much less severely than the courts. The majority also thought that a non-custodial sentence with a reparative element was an acceptable alternative to custody. These trends suggest an unusual divergence of perspectives between the community and the courts: although the public are generally critical of the courts for leniency, with respect to non-violent offending during the riots, the latter appear more punitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary sets out an agenda for researching the riots that swept through English cities in 2011, and for exploring the broader issues raised by these events. Drawing inspiration from groundbreaking social and cultural geographies of the 1981 riots, and also from mappings and quantitative studies of the more recent disturbances, this paper sets out a framework for researching the riots, and underlines the importance of doing so. It concludes that while riots are traumatic experiences for many, they can also be opportunities, which effective research can help to realise, recasting these events as catalysts for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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