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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2022
Agencies of criminal justice (particularly police and the courts) have a key but underappreciated role to play in creating a comfortable and productive environment for European Muslims. The effectiveness and fairness of police, courts, prosecutors and other elements of the legal and justice system are important in promoting a sense of safety, order and reliability within the community and, in the extreme, in preventing violent outbursts of frustration. Examination of the catalysts for riots involving racial and ethnic minorities – for example, in Toxteth in 1981 and Brixton in 1980 (both in England), and outside of Paris in 2005 – consistently underscores the fact that the violence began with a police-citizen encounter.
The April 1981 riot in Brixton was sparked by an arrest after a day of unrest fuelled by unsubstantiated rumours of police brutality. As explained by BBC News (2006):
Many young black men believed officers discriminated against them, particularly by use of the Sus law under which anybody could be stopped and searched if officers merely suspected they might be planning to carry out a crime. In early April, Operation Swamp – an attempt to cut street crime in Brixton which used the Sus law to stop more than 1,000 people in six days – heightened tensions … The mixture of high unemployment, deprivation, racial tensions and poor relations with police were not unique to Brixton. By the time Lord Scarman's report on the events in Brixton was published in November 1981, similar disturbances had taken place in a raft of other English cities, most notably Liverpool and Manchester.
Laurent Mucchielli (2009) paints a similar picture of the sources of urban riots in France. In his words (Mucchielli, 2009: 734–735):
The scenario has been more or less the same since the first ‘urban riots’ in 1990 and 1991 … The riots were triggered by the death … of local youths connected (in various ways) with police intervention. What happened this time, in the little town of Clichy-sous-Bois on Thursday 27 October 2005? It was late afternoon, the schools were on vacation, and three teenagers … who lived in Clichy, all three of North African descent, climbed over the fence around a power transformer.
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