Özet:

The protests that began as a result of the police shooting of a young man claimed to be a member of a gang named Mark Duggan on 4 August 2011 turned into kidnapping, torture and violence events between 6 and 10 August. The reasons for the violence and the kidnapping occurred were considered by the British political power as ‘unsufficient parentality’, ‘low-track morality’, ‘opportunity’, ‘magandas’, ‘storms’, ‘chets’, ‘looking-to-looking class-six’. In the face of the incidents, the British government did not undertake a comprehensive investigation on 'the causes'; on the contrary, it assessed the organization of the incident in a conservative speech referring to moral corruption and criminalization. The slogan the Conservative Party used to summarize the social and cultural problems of the British society was shown as the cause of the saying "shared society", the mass kidnapping and the incidents of scam. The cuts in public spending during and after the revolt, poverty, racial discrimination, supervision of the police were not expressed by the British government and the popular press. The coalition government and the mainstream press have significantly influenced the public and the process of judgment of the rebellion profile that it has drawn in the process of rebellion and immediately after that, without any data: the process of judgment of the rebellionists, which the British Conservative-Liberal Democratic Government, based on the emphasis on the erosioned values, criminalized by the popular press in the forms of opportunist, dumb, madanga, resulted in faster and heavier punishments than the normal functioning of the British justice system. Although the statement of the British government and the popular press on the causes of the rebellion was effective in the public and judgment process, it was insufficiently welcomed by both the opposition and academic and intellectual environments. Criticisms were expressed in the UK public on the initiative of academic and subject-sensitive environments and a comprehensive empirical study was conducted in collaboration with the Guardian/London School of Economics (LSE) to understand the original causes of the rebellion. The objective of this article is to illustrate how the 2011 British rebellions were simply criminalized by the British government and the popular press; whereas the events are behind the curtain, on the contrary, there are political, social and economic reasons. In this context, the moral erosion and criminalization speech of the British government and the popular press is criticized in the framework of the current literature formed after the rebellion; first of all, the approach of the British government to the rebellion and its criticism is presented. In the framework of these criticisms, it is uncrypted how the attempt to disclose the events by saying crime is consistent with a particular political strategy and how the social and economic dimensions of the British political power, the emphasis on moral corruption and corruption, will form the ground to politize the rebellion. Finally, based on the results of the research conducted in collaboration with the Guardian/LSE, the facts that caused the rebellion are assessed. In this context, it is discussed that the general moral corruption and crime statements of the British government are not in line with the original causes of the incidents of corruption, kidnapping and violence; on the contrary, behind the events between 6 and 10 August 2011, the class polarization, poverty, absence, discrimination, the intense police stop and search activities, as well as the result of political decisions and preferences as well as the social problems related to the transformation in the macro dynamics of global capitalism are determining. After an alleged gang member Mark Duggan was shot dead by the police on 4 August 2011, the demonstrations rapidly transformed into looting, arson and violence between 6 and 10 August 2011. The British political power defined the reason for the riots which were sparked after the death of Duggan as 'poorparenting', 'slow-motion moral collapse', 'opportunism', 'yobs', 'thugs', 'gangs', 'feral under-class'. The British government did not initiate any research to explain why the riots occurred; on the contrary, the government voraciously constructed the riots within a conservative discourse of criminalization and moral erosion. In this regard, the discourse of "broken society", deployed to mark out social and cultural problems of Great Britain by the Tories, was introduced to explain the massive scale of arson, looting and violence. Public sector cuts, poverty, racial discrimination and strict policing were not depicted by the British government and popular press. The representation of rioters, drawn by the popular press without relying on any empirical data, has had far-reaching effects on the public opinion of riots-sentencing and the criminal justice process. The figures gathered from the courts indicate that those who participated in the riots and appeared in the courts received immediate custody three times the rate as those normally sentenced for similar offences, and that the average length of their sentence was four times longer than those convicted for similar offences as well. Although the causes for the riots held by the British government and the representation of the rioters as 'black-hoody gangs' by the popular press were so effective in taking the shape of the public opinion and the criminal justice process, those explanations for the strong riots were found inadequate and biased by the opposition and in academic circles. Thus the discourse of the British government on the riots was strictly criticized. The dominance of countless conservative-attuned interpretations in the mainstream press and the biased-driven government approach required a comprehensive empirical study to understand what led to the course of events. In response to the government’s approach, comprehensive empirical research was conducted through the collaboration of the Guardian and London School of Economics (LSE) Social Policy Department. The aim of this article is to show how the 2011 England riots were simply criminalized by the British government and the popular press, and to emphasize that social and economic politically-based causes were underlying those events. In this context, the discourse of the British government and popular press which refers to moral collapse and criminalization is criticized in the light of the post-riot literature. First of all, the discursive approach of the British government on the riots and the criticism of that is presented to the reader. Secondly, it is argued that the criminalization of rioters, whose emphasis is on moral collapse, has responded to a definite political strategy by concealing the social and economic problems that otherwise may have politized the riots. Finally, it is by drawing on the results of the research conducted by Guardian/LSE that the facts causing the riots are understood.That said, it has to be pointed out that moral collapse and criminalization are not the preliminary reason for looting, arson and violence. Social and economic problems such as poverty, depravity, social exclusion, discrimination and strictpolicing based on stop and search are the consequences of both political decisions and the dynamics of the transformation of global capitalism in the last three decades.

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