I know that the overwhelming majority of people who saw scenes of violence on the news recently were appalled, disgusted and furious - and rightly so. But I'm sure we've all also noticed a small but steady number of people treating violent yobs almost as victims and arguing against their criminality, ostensibly to provide some sort of 'balance' to public discussion. These arguments have mainly consisted either of blaming the government for not helping the long-term unemployed or blaming the law-abiding public for despising lawless mobs because they don't understand their troubles. The first point is misguided, the second plain wrong, but both infuriate me because proponents seek to 'pass the buck' for criminal actions onto politicians, the public and the police by attempting to remove responsibility from those committing violent crime. To me and anyone else who has a sense of pride in their country and society, this is utterly unacceptable.
Firstly, arguments for some government culpability have a grain of truth, as the fact that around 25% of all arrests were for people living in the same postcode as the shops they looted testifies. Clearly a large minority feel little association or a sense of belonging to their community, and part of that blame does lie with successive governments failing to tackle long-term unemployment and welfare problems. But it is not reason enough to blame the current government, which has only been in power for one year. Argue all you like about planned welfare reforms (which can surely only improve a dire situation), but don't be so stupid to pin long-term problems on a young ministry.
The second argument, that the public can't possibly make a value judgement on someone smashing a corner shop or burning a house down because they don't understand his life, makes me rage. It's not only symptomatic of a culture of moral relativism where nobody can comment on anything unless it's about themselves, but is based on a false assumption that all rioters were of a poor 'underclass' or let down by society. Some of the first to be tried in court were teaching assistants, graduates, IT workers - these people are not victims of economic troubles or societal disregard. Furthermore, I don't accept that the poor have a right to destroy property and livelihoods just because they are poor. There is no easy cause to point to when looking to explain the riots, but that does not mean we should automatically afford victim status to criminals just to make sense of it all. The amount of money in someone's bank account does not make them deserving of sympathy or otherwise; when looking at situations like this we must consider actions and intentions, and in this particular case they were clear to see. But I cannot stress this point enough:
We should never judge people based on their income, but on their behaviour - and those who behave like thugs deserve to be judged and derided by society accordingly.
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/7337 - Petition to revoke benefits for those convicted of criminal acts during the London riots
