The principal cause of the riots in England that astonished the world last year was revealed recently

Leniency and Its Costs

THEODORE DALRYMPLE

In Britain, the bill comes due.

The principal cause of the riots in England that astonished the world (but not me) last year was revealed recently, when a man named Gordon Thompson was sentenced to 11 and a half years’ imprisonment at the Old Bailey for arson. That cause is the laxity of the British criminal-justice system.

It was Thompson who, last August, set fire to a family-owned furniture store in Croydon that had stood as a landmark for 140 years. The blaze spread quickly and people, some lucky to survive, had to be evacuated from nearby houses. The photo of a woman leaping from her window to escape the flames became for a time as emblematic of London as the Houses of Parliament.

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/eon0424td.html