Reducing Riots to Gangs: A critique and a warning was the title of a seminar on Friday, November 11, at London Metropolitan University (LMU)….
According to the LMU organisers, politicians and media commentators were quick to blame gangs and “gang culture” for the UK’s worst urban disorder in recent decades. Gang suppression is still being touted as a central plank in the government’s response to the disorder, even though its own figures have shown that just 13 per cent of those arrested were gang members.
In a report produced for the Runnymede Trust, a UK authority on gang culture, Prof Simon Hallsworth (London Metropolitan University) and Dr. David Brotherton (John Jay College, New York), argue that the riots have much deeper causes. In an event convened to release the report, the authors outlined their findings.
Professor Hallsworth says: “Despite the fact that riots cannot be reduced to a question of gangs, the government still appears committed to making USA style gang suppression a dominant theme in its response to the riots. Gang suppression has not worked in the US and, we argue, it will not work in the UK. It most certainly will not work to address the roots of urban disorder.”
“Our report shows that to understand the riots, we must understand the chronic social conditions the free market has created for a growing class of people in our decayed and fragmenting inner cities.”
