Amnesia and the erasure of structural racism in criminal justice professionals’ accounts of the 2011 English disturbances

Though the 2011 ‘riots’ attracted a huge amount of political, media and academic attention, state’s punitive reaction to unrest received far less analysis, despite being characterised by exceptionally harsh practices at every stage from arrest sentencing. Drawing on interviews with criminal justice professionals who were heart this response, focusing in particular Crown Prosecution Service’s unusually approach, article examines imaginations, assumptions claims that allowed variously justify problematise vindictive backlash. The shows how an imagination disturbances as apolitical unprecedented outbreak violence was central many professionals’ accounts. Yet imagination, I contend, requires significant erasure elision. Forgetting England’s long history unrest, ignoring or dismissing police killing Mark Duggan immediately precipitated disturbances, vitally important allowing ignore vital connections between entrenched structural racism has consistently underpinned post-war urban – position law order response reasonable, proportionate, necessary adequate. In doing so, makes contribution scholarship importance amnesia ignorance - conceived active, collective inherently political processes normalising discriminatory state practices, both wake riots their longer aftermath.