Riots, Reasons, and the Law

Those of us Canadians who live in Toronto or Vancouver know not to be smug about England’s riots; we’ve been there recently, albeit on a smaller scale, thankfully. We might, however, be in a good position to reflect on the question of why people riot, or, to put it impersonally, because a mob does seem to deprive its members of effective personhood, what makes a riot. On a personal note, I can attest to this mob mentality, having been in a riot in my youth — one, I might add, that had absolutely no good pretext and was formed entirely of over-privileged individuals.

The assigned pretext in each case — Toronto, Vancouver, London — is different, suggesting that more is at work here than a simple casus belli. In Toronto, the riot was said to be in some sense caused by deliberate, middle-class political action in opposition to the G20 gathering; in Vancouver, the pretext was the loss of a hockey championship; and in London, the riots are seen to be a response by the underclass to exclusion and hopelessness.

I’ve come across an old piece done in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots from the Cato Journal, an organ of the Cato Institute. In Understanding Riots (the Cato Journal, vol. 14, no. 1, Spring/Summer 1994; PDF version here), David Haddock and Daniel Polsby explore the elements necessary for riots to take place. (Though the Cato Institute is quite right wing, this piece is largely free of polemics.) Here in extremely brief form are their main points:

• A crowd must assemble.

  This usually happens around a “Schelling incident” — an event that tells people to gather and operates as a substitute for overt leadership and communication. It may be a positive or negative event. But people know that others will be there and that they share an initial focus. But this is a crowd, and not all crowds turn into riots.

• There needs to be an initiator (an “entrepreneur” the authors call him).

  People are averse to sticking out of the crowd and possibly courting arrest — “I’ll wait for someone else to go first,” the free rider problem. Someone must “throw the first stone” and that person will do so when he calculates that his chances of arrest have diminished to an acceptable level. Say the authors, “Riots await events that surmount the free rider problem.”

• Action nodes form.

  People need to know where the action is or is likely to be. In various cities certain locations act as “intuitive” meeting spots, or media may unwittingly assist in identifying action nodes.

• Reputation plays a role.

  If you’ve a reputation to lose by getting caught rioting, you’re less likely to participate. Those with no bourgeois reputation at risk — the young, the poor, those who endure racial ghettoization, for example — or those whose reputation may depend upon lawless or violent acts are most likely to riot.

• Stopping a riot is hard.

  Police lack the numbers necessary to stop a riot in full swing; and they’re not licensed to use the sort of brutality that could halt it quickly. Critical is the ability to discover and smother action nodes quickly, by removing the entrepreneurs who would initiate violence.

Riots have always been with us and have proven such a threat to civil order that special laws exist to address that specific threat. (Whether or not they are effective is another matter.) I’m thinking of what is commonly known as the Riot Act, of course. In Canada, you’ll find it in the Criminal Code. The Code describes three levels of civil disorder, increasing in seriousness. First, there is an “unlawful assembly“, participation in which is a summary conviction offence:

s.63(1) . . . three or more persons who, with intent to carry out any common purpose, assemble in such a manner or so conduct themselves when they are assembled as to cause persons in the neighbourhood of the assembly to fear, on reasonable grounds, that they (a) will disturb the peace tumultuously. . .

If the unlawful assembly bears fruit, that is, if it does in fact lead to a tumultuous disturbance of the peace, it then becomes “a riot” (s.64); taking part in a riot is an indictable offence with a maximum sentence of two years imprisonment.

Then comes level three, a consequence of reading the Riot Act to the riot:

s.67 A person who is (a) a justice, mayor or sheriff, or the lawful deputy of a mayor or sheriff . . .

who receives notice that, at any place within the jurisdiction of the person, twelve or more persons are unlawfully and riotously assembled together shall go to that place and, after approaching as near as is safe, if the person is satisfied that a riot is in progress, shall command silence and thereupon make or cause to be made in a loud voice a proclamation in the following words or to the like effect:

Her Majesty the Queen charges and commands all persons being assembled immediately to disperse and peaceably to depart to their habitations or to their lawful business on the pain of being guilty of an offence for which, on conviction, they may be sentenced to imprisonment for life. GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.

(Note that the assembly must have increased in size from the minimum of three to a minimum of twelve.) Once the proclamation has been read (or would have been read if the designated person hadn’t been forcibly prevented from reading it), the rioters have thirty minutes to depart as ordered, or face the possibility of conviction for an offence with life imprisonment as its maximum sentence (s.68).

I’ve not heard or read that the “Riot Act” has been read in London or was read in Toronto or Vancouver. Yet it seems clear from the Code that there is an obligation on the authorities to make the proclamation and elevate the seriousness to the third level.