Vincent Tabak’s trial for the murder of Joanna Yeates ended today. Tabak was convicted and given a life sentence.

As is customary, a statement was read outside court on behalf of Yeates’s parents. It contained this:

For us it is with regret that capital punishment is not a possible option for his sentence. The best we can hope for him is that he spends the rest of his life incarcerated where his life is a living hell, being the recipient of all evils, deprivations and degradations that his situation can provide.

These kinds of sentiments are common in cases like this. But it wasn’t the words themselves that perplexed me so much as the person delivering them: a police officer.

Police family liaison officers (FLOs) serve an important role. In serious, complex and high-profile cases they act as a vital link between the police and the victim or the victim’s family. FLOs ensure that victims and their relatives are given appropriate information about the progress of their case. They arrange support where necessary. They provide a humane and consistent link between the police and members of the public in the most difficult and sensitive circumstances. They are a great improvement on the times when often the first a victim’s family heard about an important development in their case was when a reporter doorstepped them to ask a question about it.

But it’s very difficult to see how FLOs making public statements to the media fits into this role. Victims and their families often find the media’s desire for access unwelcome and distressing. While it might be appropriate for the police to help victims to deal with the consequences of media attention it doesn’t follow that the police should involve themselves in the process of a private citizen wanting to speak or not speak to the media. Not only does this have the potential to disrupt what is essentially a democratic process, it also leaves the police in grave danger of compromising their role as politically-neutral servants of the state.

The Yeates family’s statement is one such case.

Public policy and the law on imprisonment says that offenders are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment. Offenders are punished by losing their freedom and the opportunities that they might have pursued were they at liberty. Prisons should not have luxury cells but nor should they be “living hells”. Prisoners are entitled to reasonable protection from violence and intimidation. They must be adequately housed and fed. They should be provided with medical and psychological care. They are entitled to be treated with respect and within the obvious confines of the situation they should be given reasonable autonomy. It follows from this that it would be against policy and in most cases against the law for the prison service or individual prison officers to make or allow a prisoner’s life to become a “living hell” where they suffer significant deprivation and degradation.

Like all private citizens, the Yeates family are entitled to hold and express whatever views they choose but I can see no justification for those views to be conveyed through a police mouthpiece with all the implied credibility that brings. It isn’t the job of the police to use public resources to help anyone contribute to a debate on policy, let alone to amplify a desire for treating someone with contempt for the law as it stands and in a way that’s contrary to the core values of the police and prison services. This brings the police into disrepute. Detective inspector Russ Jones might not agree with the sentiments in the words he read but the ease with which he read them entitles one to raise the question.

Police officers should not make their jobs harder by acting like Max Clifford. FLOs should be prohibited from speaking to the media on behalf of victims and their families. At the very least, the FLO in this case should have declined to read the parts of the statement about capital punishment and the Yeates’s hope for Tabak’s “degradation” in prison.

If the Yeates family or anyone else has a written statement that they want to give to the media they can send it directly to the Press Association. Then there will be no possibility of it tainting the police or it being given undue credibility by them.

It’s become a cliche among many people that rioting is an inevitable consequence of deprivation and injustice. Last night’s rioting in Tottenham inspired a predictable – one might say inevitable – crop of examples on Twitter:

It’s because David Cameron turns a blind eye to corruption between Murdoch and Metropolitan Police that alienation makes riots inevitable. – derekrootboy

I don’t agree with riots but was inevitable when working classes are being fucked over like this. – mollymccowen

Riots inevitable in people who cannot express their anger in any other way. Historical precedents a-plenty. – Jos21

The riots were inevitable. That’s the first thing I said when I heard about the shooting. Anger and hot summer nights are a lethal cocktail – iheni

tottenham riots Soh dem mash up Tottenham, !!! Was inevitable after the shooting of Mark Duncan (sic). Wasn’t rocket science in my book – Mafia1065

Historically it’s inevitable there are riots when there are cuts like this – HelenReloaded

the climate in our country is terrible and riots were inevitable but the looting and destroying of places of work saddens me – evey_moriarty

This was inevitable..tory government. Riots. Protests. Cuts. Unemployment. Disaffected Youth. Strikes. Recession. Police Brutality. – xxlucyxlucyxx

When people are attacked by ideological cuts and suffer racism from the police, riots like this are inevitable. – PennyRed

Riots were inevitable given building unhappiness with the manner in which the police conducts itself – dr_rita39

The Guardian is giving front-page space today to a video from a week ago in which a young man from Haringey asserts that the closure of local youth clubs will lead to riots.

Dave Osler at Liberal Conspiracy skilfully avoids the i-word but you can tell he means it:

[S]uch is the degree of disconnect between all the major parties and the street that the chances of positive engagement are next to zero. There is instead the recourse of riot.

Back at the Guardian, Dave Hill offers a slightly more nuanced explanation:

In such a climate [of economic deprivation and government cutbacks], an event such as the shooting dead by police of 29 year-old father of four Mark Duggan on Thursday night is more likely to provide in some minds, especially young ones, a pretext, a rationale or an opportunity to jettison any respect for the law or regard for fellow citizens and let rip.

These widespread views about the supposed inevitability of rioting need closer examination.

Those who make the case for inevitable rioting are rarely speaking about themselves. Journalists and commentators on comfortable middle incomes are less likely to be seriously affected by a sluggish economy, government cutbacks and police thuggery than those at the bottom of the social pile even if they’re as angry about it as anyone else. They won’t be out at 5am torching John Lewis or looting the local Jigsaw.

Nor will the people in the Guardian’s youth clubs video or those discussing the rioting on Twitter. Many of these people are likely to be in very similar circumstances to those burning, looting and attacking the emergency services.

What’s notable about the Tottenham riots and rioting in the UK in general is the scale – not how large and commonplace riots are but how small and rare. Anecdotes suggest that people were coming from across London to join a riot just a few hundred strong in Tottenham. As some of those arrested give their home addresses in court this week we’ll see whether this can be confirmed. Rioting as an activity relies on the disinhibition and physical protection of strength in numbers. Tottenham by itself may have been too small a place to recruit a critical mass of rioters.

All of which suggests that the rioting in Tottenham may be far more about the those few rioters themselves than the society in which all of us live. Rioting stems not from the social grievances and frustrations of the many but from the desire for mayhem and the lack of self control of the few. Even in boom times the UK has around a million people unemployed and looking for work. Why isn’t there a riot every day of the week?

There are adequate good reasons to provide effective public services and social opportunities for people of all backgrounds without resorting to political blackmail: do this or riots will inevitably follow. Whether you want better student funding, good youth clubs or a competent and honest police service, public policy shouldn’t be run like a protection racket. Politicians should fear the masses casting ballots not the mob casting stones.

So people need to be very cautious when talking about the supposed inevitability of riots. If one person riots but the majority of his neighbours in exactly the same circumstances do not, that’s a matter of individual differences not social breakdown. The solutions to this kind of behaviour are found in psychology and criminology not politics.

Those who talk about the inevitability of riots show gross disrespect to the vast majority of people who live peaceably with their neighbours and abide by the law despite deprivation and injustice. They show disrespect to the rioters too. If some people can’t help themselves rioting they are put outside the proper demands of the community and the law, stripped of any meaningful citizenship. They’re robbed of their moral agency too – deprived of their ability to discern the right course of action whatever the circumstances and to act accordingly.

We need to have higher expectations of everyone than that.

Article title preserved for posterity but it’s clear now that Ian Tomlinson was not a protester and was just walking home from work. Please see the updates in the comments at the bottom of this post.

Unnamed: The protester who died. Photo: public domain via Guardian

Photo by Alex Watts.

I’m shocked and saddened that a man died during the G20 protests in London yesterday.

Every death potentially related to police activity is automatically investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. But while their inquiry is in progress, the truth about this incident needs to surface, and soon.

Mainstream media reporting has spun this story away from its most obvious potential substance — policing tactics — to the alleged behaviour of the protesters themselves who the police say attacked police medics trying to give assistance to the dying (or perhaps, dead) man.

The Telegraph dutifully repeats the police allegations as fact without troubling themselves with any corroboration:

[A]s officers went to the man’s aid, they were pelted with bottles and other missiles, forcing them to retreat.

The Times at least paraphrases its source:

The Met said that as the officers tried to revive the man they came under attack from protesters who threw bottles at them

The Guardian is also happy to repeat the story without corroboration:

A man died last night during the G20 protests in central London as a day that began peacefully ended with police saying bottles were thrown at police medics trying to help him.

Meanwhile over on Twitter, @jdodds writes:

Talking to eye witnesses from yesterday.protester who died had symtoms related to a head wound.was seen to be hit by truncheon

If true, this puts a wholly different light on events. There isn’t any dispute that the man died within the police cordon near the junction of Birchin Lane and Cornhill between 7 and 8pm yesterday. Did he die from natural causes? Were these aggravated by effectively being detained on the street, possibly without food or drink? Did he suffer a head wound and was it caused by the police? Did the cordon itself prevent him receiving timely treatment? How did the other protesters react? Violently? Helpfully?

We don’t know, but given that the police have been very quick to tell the tale about the “attack” on them by protesters but were wholly unable to give any indication as to why the man may have died, it’s about time we found out.

As I write there is a protest against the man’s death taking place near the Bank of England, where tributes have been left.

R.I.P.