NCJ Number
229458
Date Published
2009
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This introductory chapter first provides an overview of the events of the French riots of 2005 and the British riots of 2001, placing each of the riots in historical and theoretical contexts, followed by a review of the origins, focus, scope and contents of this book, "Rioting in the UK and France: A Comparative Analysis."
Abstract
The French riots of October-November 2005 mainly involved youths and police confronting one another across the country, which consisted of rioters setting fire to cars and buildings, causing the French Prime Minister to declare a state of emergency. Only a few deaths were associated with the rioting; however, hundreds of people were injured, including police and firefighters, and property damage was estimated at 200 million francs. Although unprecedented in its scope and duration, within the previous decade, France had experienced numerous urban disorders that resulted from a variety of triggering incidents. The British disorders most similar to the French disorders were the riots that occurred in the spring and early summer of 2001. Riot locations were in a few former mill towns and cities in West Yorkshire and East Lancashire. They involved confrontations between police and British-born youths of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin. This was one in a series of British riots spanning a 35-year period. The current book stemmed from a series of workshops held in 2007 that were attended by British and French academics interested in analyzing the riots in the two countries. The book has four parts. Part I places the riots in the two countries in historical and theoretical contexts. Part II focuses on the British riots of 2001 and 2005. Part III addresses the French riots of 2005-2008, and Part IV examines rioting in other major western societies.