My impression is that in contrast to the early Police anti-riot operations – with all the caveats mentioned in the preceeding post – the number of arrests, charges, sentencing by the courts etc. – is going very well. As a deterrent to future flash-mob riots, it doesn’t get much better than this. A friend of mine who is a magistrate tells me there is a huge team of people in the Police – about 500 – sifting through photos and video.
According to this press association article from yesterday;
The Met released the latest riots crime figures today, showing there has been a total of 1,920 arrests (1,508 adults and 412 juveniles). So far 1,098 people have been charged (864 adults, 234 juveniles).
Another source, this wiki has a pretty good roundup and cites 3,100 arrests nationwide as at August 15th.
There’s something else here – an indirect benefit from something so awful. Though civil rights / Big Brother types would be concerned, in the future there will be vast amounts of new data about potential criminals for the Police to crunch that will make crime-fighting much easier in the years to come.