http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... acy-crisis
This week's report from the Ministry of Justice rejects the government's theory that gang membership lay at the root of the riots. Background analysis suggests instead that the predominant feature of the rioters was something else. Among young people arrested during the riots, more than two-thirds were classed as having special educational needs and one third had been excluded from school in the past year. Just as our prisons teem with people who cannot read properly, so for those terrible nights did the streets of our cities.