U.K. Rioters: Young, Poor, Male and Unemployed

Posted on Aug 19, 2011

AP / Elizabeth Dalziel

The window of a shop in the Clapham neighborhood of London is seen smashed and taped up after riots on Aug 9.

The Guardian put together a database of court cases of those detained during and after the unrest that swept London in early August after Metropolitan Police shot 29-year-old Mark Duggan in the city’s Tottenham neighborhood.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said the riots “were not about poverty,” but analysis showed that 41 percent of rioting suspects within the judicial system live in areas that rank in the top 10 percent of the most economically dispossessed places in the country, with 66 percent of the neighborhoods in which the accused live having become poorer between 2007 and 2010. Heavy youth unemployment, child poverty and lack of educational opportunity were found in almost all of the areas where rioting was the worst. More then 90 percent of the accused are male.

Review the list of cases and convictions so far here. —ARK

The Guardian:

Based on unprecedented access to information from magistrates courts across England, the Guardian’s data project gives a new insight into the riots, shedding light on those accused of involvement, from their age and gender to the length of sentences being handed down.

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

... The Guardian database adds further detail to these statistics and appears to confirm that the accused are overwhelmingly young, male and often unemployed.

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