How much do you have to lose?

Les Back

Dept of Sociology, Goldsmiths

Friday, 4 May 2012

“JD Getting Raided”

Friday, 4 May 2012

8th August, 2012Would you go into JD?

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq1oonrfK8I&feature=related

• What would stop you?- Religious faith- Parental values- Societal morals?- Fear of reprisal?

Friday, 4 May 2012

Pure criminality?

Friday, 4 May 2012

“Its time we stopped hearing all this (you know) nonsense about how there are deep sociological justifications for wanton criminality and destruction of peoples’ property.

“Whatever peoples’ grievances may be it does not justify smashing up someone’s shop, wrecking their livelihood and kicking them out of a job.”

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, visiting Clapham on Tuesday 9th August 2011; reported in national press and

Friday, 4 May 2012

“Do not deplore, do not laugh, do not hate, but understand.”

Friday, 4 May 2012

Who were the rioters?

MoJ figures revealed that, where ethnicity was recorded, 33% of those appearing in the courts on riot-related charges were white, 43% were black and 7% Asian. The figures varied significantly from area to area, often closely resembling the ethnic makeup of the local population: in London, 32% of defendants were white, in Merseyside, the figure was 79%

Friday, 4 May 2012

Avery Gordon

“Almost everywhere and at all times poor people of colour, ethnic/ religious minorities, migrants and dissidents are over represented in prisons.”

Friday, 4 May 2012

Stop and search

• 1993 Young black males were 5 times more likely than whites to be stopped by police

• In 2010 Black men are 26 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched

Friday, 4 May 2012

Higher levels of custodial

Convicted black offenders 17% more likely to be jailed immediatelySince 1998 there have been 333 deaths in police custody – not a single

Friday, 4 May 2012

Mass imprisonment

In 2010 Black prisoners make up 15% of the prisoner population and this compares with 2.2% of the general population – there is greater disproportionality in the number of black people in prisons in the UK than there is in the United States. The number of black people jailed in England and Wales is seven times larger than the amount they make up of the population.

Friday, 4 May 2012

Craig Haney On the supermaximum prison

The new social order that is emerging is defined by three deformed and dependent classes of people: a prison class housed in a network of prison, a class of jailers who service the network and a class of professional legal and administrative elites who decide into which of the other two categoris the bulk of the population with be placed.

Friday, 4 May 2012

“It wasn’t political, it was shopping”

The riots weren’t about protest, unemployment or cuts. They weren’t about the future, about tomorrow and a person’s place in the world. They were about today, about now. They were about instant gratification.

Friday, 4 May 2012

“Disqualified consumers”

Revolutions are not staple products of social inequality; but minefields are. Minefields are areas filled with randomly scattered explosives: one can be pretty sure that some of them, some time, will explode – but one can’t say with any degree of certainty which ones and when.

Friday, 4 May 2012

Plato’s two cities

Friday, 4 May 2012