Who's really responsible?

[netherlee]

No idea if this has been mentioned on MN but I found this article with some statistics (shock horror) of the rioters. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14504294 (cant do links) and it runs counter to the popular image that youths are primarily responsible (though age 18/19/20 could still make a lot but still). My eldest particularly gets very anxious at how youths are portrayed and conclusions always jumped to and this is one example of this being untrue. Indeed one of the first prosecuted was a teaching assistant, so not all unemployed little chavs I am exceptionally proud of my DC for how I have brought them up.

Good to see Scotland being seen as the good guys for a change not violent scum as so many see us.

Whilst agreeing with the point that 'youths' as a subset are not a universally bad lot, I think all we can be sure of statistically at the moment is the profile of the ones who have been identified and arrested. The more street-smart, regularly criminal types who covered their faces will evade capture. It'll be the opportunistic chancers and the ones too thick to remember that shops and town centres are plastered with CCTV who will be the ones hauled in....

"The more street-smart, regularly criminal types who covered their faces will evade capture. It'll be the opportunistic chancers and the ones too thick to remember that shops and town centres are plastered with CCTV who will be the ones hauled in."

The opposite seems to actually be true.

Channel 4 news reported that the majority of those arrested in London in connection with the riots already have criminal records. The possible explanation given was that they would be the ones that the police were familiar with and so could identify and detain easier.