A nervous calm has returned to the streets of England after last month's widespread riots, arson and looting across London and other cities sent shockwaves around the world. As far away as Japan people were asking if Britain was safe any more, and one German politician suggested moving next year's Olympic Games to safety in Germany.
Key questions remain about what sparked riots in so many different places, some far from the initial north London area where police killed a black gang suspect. None of the explanations is satisfactory, but Britain and the West generally should take careful stock of the dangerous ways that inexorable economic decline may lead to potentially worse social upheaval.
Prime Minister David Cameron blamed street gangs and opportunistic looters and declared that criminality would be punished. Magistrates and judges duly obliged. Two men who tried to foment "massive lootin" (their expression) using Facebook, got four years each in prison, even though only one of them turned up at the scene of the proposed riot. Hundreds of others received stiff prison sentences where previously they would have escaped with non-custodial sentences.