Were the riots about poverty? No, but new data links crime and the broken society
Neil O'Brien is Director of Policy Exchange, an independent think tank working for better public services, a stronger society and a more dynamic economy. He writes in a personal capacity
Neil O'Brien | The Telegraph | October 25th, 2011
Riot police guard Debenhams in Peckham
The Ministry of Justice released some much more detailed data yesterday on the social background of those convicted of offences during this summer's riots. They have stirred up the argument again about whether the riots were about poverty.
I was debating this point last week at an event organised by the Trust for London, entitled "were we too quick to say the riots weren't about poverty."
I have mixed feelings about this.
I think the idea that the riots were some kind of political protest or "uprising" is nonsense. Nor were people stealing because they needed to because of poverty – they were stealing things they wanted (big flatscreens and new trainers), not things they needed.
In fact "rioting" is, by and large the wrong word. Except perhaps for the initial incident in Tottenham, "looting" was a much better word. "Riots" are generally about something. The poll tax. Police racism. That sort of thing. Normally after a riot people get convicted of offences of violence (generally against the poor old police). But the new stats show that 71 per cent of those found guilty of an offence in August were charged with robbery, burglary or theft. They were nicking stuff, not making a point.
Poverty was not necessary or sufficient condition for involvement in the riots either. Some of those charged with offences during the riots were pretty well off.
And people with good prospects do riot. Think of the student riots earlier in the year. Or Mods vs Rockers if you want an earlier example.
If not a cause of the riots, was poverty at least a good predictor of involvement in a riot?
There are a very large number of people in "poverty" as the government defines it. – on the government’s definition there are 13 ½ million people living in households that are “in poverty” (22 per cent of the population*) but only a few thousand people involved in riots. That means that knowing someone was in poverty would have little predictive power.
Are there better predictors? Yes: criminality.
Three quarters of those who appeared in court charged with riot offences had a criminal record. In total, those brought before the courts have committed nearly 20,000 previous offences, at an average of 11 previous offences per individual (or 14 previous offences per offender who has at least one previous offence)
The difference most striking for young people – 45 per cent of males aged 10-17 brought before the courts for the disorder had at least one previous conviction. This compares with just 2 per cent of the 10-17 year old male population who have at least one previous conviction – i.e. young rioters were 22 times more likely than the population to have a record.
This is unsurprising. In the social sciences if is always quite difficult to find strong correlations with background variables. If you want to find factors with strong correlations to behaviour, you normally need to look at behavioural data, rather than background social data.
Does poverty breed crime?
I think quite a lot of the arguments about the riots are really a proxy for a different debate, which is about the links between poverty and crime more generally.
Avoiding riots is mostly about policing, not poverty. Criminals are not in general irrational, and most rioters had criminal history. These people make calculations about the odds of profiting versus getting caught, and the slow police response changed the odds for them for a couple of days.
But surely there is some link between poverty and criminality? My position on this is somewhere in the middle.
Some people on the hard left argue that you can’t do anything about crime unless you tackle poverty or inequality. That is clearly wrong. Lets look at the record.
- In 1980 we had 14 per cent poverty and 11 million crimes on the British Crime Survey measure.
- In 1995 we had 24 per cent poverty and 19m crimes
- In 2008 we had 22 per cent poverty and 9.6m crimes
So in other words comparing 1995 and 2008, we had 10 million fewer crimes with “poverty” little changed. Or comparing 2008 and 1980, we had less crime with nearly twice the poverty rate. What changed? After 1995 Michael Howard's much tougher policies were continued by his Labour successors. To me that shows that the effectiveness of the criminal justice system is a far more important determinant of the level of crime than social factors.
And yet, there are social origins of crime. In fact there is a two way relationship both for individual people and places. A criminal record will make it hard for you to get on. High crime stops areas from regenerating.
Rather than talking about poverty in general – can we isolate more potent social causes? We know some groups are particularly likely to end up in the criminal justice system. Children who have been in the care system are vastly over represented in our prisons. We know a little about intergenerational criminality too. Controlling for other factors, “prisoners are… two and a half times as likely to have had a family member convicted of a criminal offence” according to a Cabinet Office report.
Many of the constituent elements of poverty are linked to criminality: growing up with abusive or chaotic parents, drink and drug dependency and educational failure are all part of the story.
Root causes?
Instead of thinking we can cure poverty and crime by spending more on benefits and tax credits, the best way to tackle both is to think about root causes.
And that's where the new data is so interesting. 35 per cent of adults involved were claiming an out of work benefit at the time of the disorder, compared to 12 per cent of the working age population in England in February 2011. (Though higher than the average that's actually lower than the 45 per cent of all offenders who were sentenced for an indictable offence in 2010 were claiming benefits.)
66 per cent of juveniles were classified as having some form of special educational need (compared to 21 per cent of all pupils in maintained secondary schools). Over a third (36 per cent) of juveniles were identified as having had at least one fixed period exclusion from school during 2009/10 (compared to 6 per cent of all Year 11 pupils)
The data on the riots is telling us something interesting about the roots of criminality. If we want to prevent crime, rather than just mop up the consequences, we have got to get better at using what we know to take young people off the conveyor belt to crime.
* According to the Government's measure, if you have enough kids, you can be in poverty on about £35,000 year (thanks to the magic of something called equivalisation). As I've argued before, we don't currently think about poverty the right way.
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