August riots | Centre for Crime and Justice Studies

Publication

Understanding the riots

To make sense of last summer's riots it is important to put them in historical perspective. A comparison with the 1981 riots in Brixton, Liverpool and elsewhere and with the 2001 riots in Bradford and nearby towns reveals two shifts. The concerns of the rioters have shifted from a clear response to...

Publication

Understanding the riots

Publication

Explaining the riots

The response of government, police and criminal justice agencies, media and campaigners across the political spectrum to the rioting last August was all too predictable. There was general agreement that these events were sui generis and portentous. No one seemed to recall that only a few months...

Publication

Policing the riots: from Bristol and Brixton to Tottenham, via Toxteth, Handsworth, etc

The most surprising thing about this summer's riots was the surprise that greeted them; as if we had not seen their like before. If not actually hypocritical, such surprise is disingenuous. Once poor people have exhausted what few legitimate resources they have, if feelings of anger and frustration...

Publication

The law of moments: understanding the flashpoint that ignited the riots

In his detailed review of major instances of public disorder in eighteenth and nineteenth century England, Stevenson (1979), remarks how ‘it is often possible to pinpoint a moment when things might have turned out differently’. In ‘pre-riot situations’ in which crowds ‘milled around’, indignantly...

Publication

Riots, pure and simple?

‘It is criminality, pure and simple’; so said the Prime Minister in his Statement to Parliament on 11 August 2011 following days and nights of rioting and looting across London and other English cities. As most of us usually concern ourselves with issues of criminal and social justice, we are more...

News

British Journal of Criminology- May 2014 issue now available

The May 2014 issue of the British Journal of Criminology (Issue 54, Vol.3) is out now.

Sadiya Akram's article, 'Recognising...

Comment

Riots, pure and simple?

This is an unreferenced version of Professor Tim Hope's introduction to cjm 87 on the August 2011 riots. A referenced version of this piece, along with the full contents, is on the publisher's website.

Publication

cjm 87: The August 2011 Riots

The themed section featuring a series of articles by contributors who consider the background of, and offer a narrative about, the riots that took place in August 2011. Guest editor Tim Hope introduces a number of contributors, including David Waddington who points out that public disorders in...