Alex Thomson
Belfast riots: retrospective policing
Police in Belfast were at full-stretch recently as rioting broke out on the streets. Now they are intending to catch-up with the perpetrators after the event.
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Conditions inside Brazil’s prisons
A series of riots in jails across Brazil in recent months have left dozens of prisoners dead. The incidents, in a country with the third largest prison population in the world, have raised serious questions about conditions and staffing in Brazil’s jails.
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Alex Thomson
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FactCheck: Broken Britain and broken promises – Clegg’s riot payback collapses
“In fact, it seems only a tiny minority of people who have already been dealt with by the courts have been ordered to don the famous orange vests. The precise number, according to London Probation Trust, is 15 in the capital.”
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FactCheck: Why Cameron’s problem families vow will cost billions
“In Cornwall, there are estimated to be up to 1,350 families with multiple problems. How many are being offered intensive help? Just 14.”
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FactCheck: How’s that riots crackdown going?
“There’s currently no legal mechanism for forcing offenders to agree to meet their victims. If the rioters don’t feel like a face-to-face showdown then, as things stand, they won’t have to do it.”
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FactCheck: Will prisons in England and Wales burst at the seams?
“The powder-keg potential of the situation is clear to voices from inside the prison system – rapidly rising numbers of new inmates, many of them vulnerable first-timers thrown in with serving prisoners, some members of street gangs whose violent rivalries will continue on the inside.”
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FactCheck: Does Boris have the right to weigh into the police cuts row?
Boris Johnson got himself in hot water with fellow Conservatives when he bucked the party line on police cuts. But the Mayor of London has already angered opponents over his own record on funding the Met. FactCheck referees.
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FactCheck: Have riots put police front line on the back foot?
David Cameron and Theresa May insist the cuts won’t affect the police’s ability to handle major incidents like this week’s riots. FactCheck investigates.
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Is our ruling class clueless on the riots?
Listening to politicians trying to explain the riots has begged a question that doesn’t usually spring to mind : do they have the faintest idea what is going on?
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FactCheck: How tough can the police get with the rioters?
Curfews, water cannon, troops on the streets. Are any of these practical possibilities in the coming days? FactCheck looks at what the police can and can’t do to get the riots under control.
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FactCheck: Police errors prompted Mark Duggan protest
The Met admit they failed to tell Mark Duggan’s parents that he had been killed by police marksmen, FactCheck learns.
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Today’s silliest question on the riots
Riots in London confuse us. They don’t happen often enough for us to have much understanding of them. I am very wary of anyone who claims to know what is really going on.