 There was wide commentary in the news media about the social situation in and around Moston. Writing in The Times, Jon Ronson focused on Manchester's apparent economic imbalance, pointing out that while "superficially, it is a city of growth" — hosting international environmental conferences in 1993 and bidding to host the 2000 Olympic Games — this could not disguise the realities of the poor quality of "built-to-collapse" housing, the city council's policy on homelessness, poverty, street violence and drug culture, all of which played parts in the events leading up to Capper's murder. The city, he said, had violent' no-go 'areas, where "you can expect to be mugged," created through drug abuse and hopelessness, and populated by people who "don't work, have no money, and rarely leave the houses that they find themselves living in before dark." Ronson highlighted a city of contrasts, where "expensive canal-side cafes are springing up faster than you can count them: the joke around town is that you can sip cappuccino all day and gaze out at the corpses floating past." David Ward, writing in The Guardian, similarly drew attention to the housing policies, and quoted an older Moston resident as saying: "These people are moving in and out every three months. They 're illiterate half of them — just shagging and having kids." The Daily Mail – in what Barker and Petley called "ideological overdrive" – described Capper's killers as "the product of a society that tolerates petty crime, the break-up of families and feckless spending ... Most of Suzanne's tormentors were on social security ... [and belong to] an underclass which is a grave threat to Britain's future." Author Carol Anne Davis agreed that when looking for answers about how this crime came about one need only "look at the upbringings of these women who were single parents to three children by their mid twenties, had teenage boyfriends who were barely legal and who supported themselves through drug dealing and theft."
