Response to 2024 summer riots failed to address root causes and links to racism, report says

"The response to the 2024 riots in England and Northern Ireland failed to address its root causes and delinked the violence from racism, a thinktank has claimed. A paper by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) reported that an obfuscation of the causes and consequences of the riots risks legitimising further far-right mobilisation and vigilante violence. It said that what happened has often been reduced to mindless thuggery or violence."

"What emerges from the binding narrative of defendants who participated in the riots could be compared to the distorted confines of an echo chamber. Unless society comes to terms with the deeper causes of anti-migrant, Islamophobic and racist violence we will be caught in a vicious cycle of events that repeatedly reinforce each other, with the prospect of ugly protests and riots forming an infinite loop."

"The violence broke out after the murder of three young girls in Southport, amid the spread of false information online that the perpetrator was an asylum seeker. The report, by criminologist Dr Jon Burnett, studied a sample of court cases related to the riots. He found that the Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak's stop the boats slogan and the policy framework around it, which he said was continued by Labour when they took power, was repeatedly echoed."

Responses to the 2024 riots in England and Northern Ireland did not address root causes and separated the violence from racial motivation, increasing risk of far-right mobilisation and vigilante violence. Causes and consequences were often reduced to mindless thuggery. Anti-migrant, Islamophobic and racist motives were present and repeatedly echoed in defendants' narratives. Violence followed the murder of three girls in Southport and the spread of false online claims that the perpetrator was an asylum seeker. Political slogans and policies such as 'stop the boats' were reflected in defendants' justifications, and officials and the criminal justice system proved inadequate.

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