Riots victims panel to be set up
An independent panel is being set up for victims of the riots across England. Offenders will also be forced to wear visible orange clothing while taking part in “community payback schemes”.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the independent communities and victims’ panel, chaired by an independent figure, would produce a report within six to nine months.
“It won’t be a public inquiry, it won’t be established under the Inquiries Act, but it will serve as a way in which victims and communities can have their voice heard,” he said.
Mr Clegg said the Cabinet Office would also be tendering for a contract to do research into the communities affected by the riots to find out more about “what happened, who did what and why they did it”.
“It is really important at a time like this that we should not allow hope and optimism to be suffocated by fear and pessimism,” he said.
Mr Clegg also confirmed plans for a “riot payback scheme”, with offenders helping to clean up areas hit by the disturbances.
Victims will also be given the right to confront those who tore up their neighbourhoods to hammer home the fact that the actions of rioters had consequences, with additional money provided to make that possible.
Read more from Channel 4 News about the riots across England
‘Visible orange clothing’
Mr Clegg also announced that in the areas affected there will be community payback schemes where “people in visible orange clothing” will be making up for the damage done.
He added: “I also want them to face their victims. I want them to face people like the woman I met on Monday last week in Tottenham, who said to me that she was still wearing the clothes … she was wearing when she ran out of her flat before her own flat was burned down.
“The offender who did that, who set fire to that building, should have to face her and understand that there are human consequences, to explain why he or she did what they did and to apologise.”
As part of the measures to end the “dismal cycle of repeat crime”, Mr Clegg also said that those released from jail from March next year would be “met at the prison gates” by providers in the Work Programme.
The offenders will be put through a “tough process so that they find work and they stay on the straight and narrow”.
Mr Clegg dismissed the suggestion that the riots were in part provoked by the Government’s austerity measures.
He said: “It is simply ludicrous to suggest that someone smashed a window to steal a BlackBerry, to steal the latest pair of Adidas trainers, because they didn’t like Government policy.
“If you don’t like Government policy come and protest in Parliament Square.”
He added: “This wasn’t a protest against Government, this was a nihilistic outburst of acquisitive crime.”