New and social media have seen almost blanket coverage of the events, so I have little to add, save to link to some interesting legal coverage of the issues involving policing policy, blaming social media, vigilante justice, journalists’ rights and paying for damage under riot law.
One issue which sadly has not arisen from these riots is freedom of speech; it would appear that there has been little sense or motive behind the violence following the initial catalyst.
- A legal guide to citizen’s arrest, Rupert Myers considers the position of property owners protecting their homes and shops.
- Teenager detained after posting allegedly riot-inciting Facebook message, police reports | Pinsent Masons LLP – Given that social media has been branded as both the cause and solution to the riots, it is no surprise that some people may get into trouble for posting inflammatory public messages. And as opposed to some other cases, the incitement in these cases may be clear cut.
- Reporting the UK riots: what are journalists’ rights? | Media | guardian.co.uk: David Banks, the author of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists, gives guidance to journalists reporting riot and protests.
- Policing the London riots – Halsbury’s Law Exchange Tom Hennessey considers the riots in the context of policing policy.
- Violence at the Edge: Tottenham, Athens, Paris – Human Rights in Ireland – Illan Rua Wall on the Human Rights in Ireland blog is concerned at the “tinderbox of social tension bubbling just below the surface” of the riots, sparked by police violence.
- Law and Lawyers: Who will pay? We all will ! The Riot (Damages) Act 1886 – Legal blogger Obiter J questions who will pay under the 19th century Riot (Damages) Act 1886
- Moving past the UK riots: More youth clubs not police, please – Human Rights in Ireland Deirdre Duffy argues that according to her own research, the riots are being caused by “sustained and largely unrelieved deprivation and the removal of places for young people to cope with these pressures“.
Finally, legal blogger David Allen Green has published a number of posts: on Jack of Kent; Predicting a riot Let’s not bring in the army; and in The New Statesman; Keeping the riots in proportion Rioters, police, and sentimentality.
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