For the benefit of the HN readers outside of the UK. I'm one of the UK-based HN'ers. I don't live in London but am close enough to pass through on an almost daily basis. I'm normally in London about once or twice a week (third time this week today). This is my opinion. I know people involved in Youth Offending Services and plenty of police forces, but it is just and opinion. I spoke to a friend in Youth Offending Services, they were just surprised that it hadn't happened sooner.

Put simply, our policing and justice models are broken. Everything is broken from the level of force the police are allowed to apply, through to the way that targets are set up to the sentences that magistrates are allowed to set.

The rehabilitation model is also broken. Youths who get into trouble are forced to attend courses to discuss their feelings. There is no real sense of punishment and for them there are no real consequences. As a result of all of this, we have bred several generations of a failed underclass, some of whom have no sense of personal responsibility. We have entire generations on welfare where kids don't really have a hope in hell of getting out of the hole they're in.

At the same time they're told that they're entitled to great things in the media, the role models they're given live a lifestyle far beyond their reach but promote vicious or illegal activity and that if they want something that they should take it.

The combination of a lack of consequences and the inability of the police to control the initial riots has caused other groups across the country to test the local police forces and there is a slowly growing realisation that the police are ineffective at stopping this type of crime, unless large numbers are used.

These people still believe that there will be no consequences for their actions, and that if they are caught then they'll face little by way of punishment due to prison overcrowding and the sheer volume of crime. Here's an interview with a rioter, and with people who've decided to take the law into their own hands in Manchester: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9560000/9560646....

There is no simple resolution to this situation. Many people are calling for the army to go in, but the problem isn't that the police are ineffectual and outnumbered, it's that they're not allowed to engage. This in turn enrages local people who see the police at one end of the street while looters strip somewhere clean at the other end. This will not end well, mark my words.

If the police manage to restore order completely across the country for long enough then there's a chance that we can return to what we've had, but the genie has come out of the bottle and the feral elements of the underclass know that there are limits to the capabilities to stop them in the first place.

If the police cannot restore order, then things will get worse as softer targets are chosen (such as purely residential areas, currently largely untouched) and people take the law into their own hands.

Again - this is just my opinion. You may have one. I may be wrong. I just thought I'd write this in case people want an idea of what's being discussed round these parts.