Arrests, Mapped, & Re-Mapped in the United Kingdom's 1981 and 2011 riots
When we represent and view groups of people numerically, we often get disincentivized to learn more about whose stories we bury behind the numbers. When we refer this way to people participating in and getting affected by the social uprisings, we also fail to account for their motivations, which can help us better understand the causes of such historical events.
The ArcGIS StoryMap "Arrested, Mapped, & Re-Mapped in the United Kingdom's 1981 and 2011 riots" was developed as a part of this larger project (and could be accessed via https://arcg.is/1fjmCH0), however, it is not accessible now; due to human error, I missed the renewal of software subscription, and lost the project data! The approaches I outline below are referenced with regards to ArcGIS, and I made sure to transfer them to Google Data Studio (Figure 10), producing the visualizations that follow the same practices as in ArcGIS.
The project utilizes the U.K.'s Home Office data on the arrests during the riots of 1981 and 2011 and data with interviews of people participating in the riots of 2011 across the U.K. It uses these data sources to produce three maps, arguing for the benefits of the geospatial approach for representing the numerical data on riots of 1981 and 2011, noting the limitations of such an approach and a way to overcome it by mapping with non-numerical data on riots. As an introductory visual to this project, I wanted to create a figure that could juxtapose the number of people arrested during these riots. Hence, Figure 12.
Figure 12. The number of people arrested in riots of 1981 and 2011, in total, and per police force authority.
In the following sections, I apply mapping as a proposed technique to solve this issue - by using the base map of the country and adding spatial layers of police authority boundaries, along with the data from primary sources. I also offer a critique of the primary sources data, proposing a mapping approach to present the perspectives of people participating in the riots.
Retrieving and Mapping the Arrests Data of 1981
I start by digitizing the data from Primary Source 1, highlighted in yellow (Figure 12). The data I get comprises two columns - the police force area name and the total number of arrests.
Figure 12. Primary Source 1 - Data on 1981 Riot Arrests.
Data in Primary Source 1 was collected and produced by the Home Office (Statistical Bulletin Issue 20/82).[77] I retrieve the table from a secondary source article, "A geographical perspective on the 1981 urban riots in England,"[78] as the original material is only available upon request and via post ).[79]
The source includes data from 25 police force authorities in total. I document these 25 records in a Google Sheet and save them in a CSV-file format for mapping.
To represent the data spatially, I utilize the ArcGIS Online mapping tool.
I combine official, publicly-available files with the coordinates of police force areas in the United Kingdom and convert them into a GeoJSON file. Once I upload this file as a layer to ArcGIS, I map the boundaries of 28 police force authorities (Figure 13).
While the number of authorities in this layer is still 28 out of 44, we can see the "base map," which helps us represent a more complete geographic picture of the country's territory. Mapping the boundaries of only 28 police forces is motivated by the availability of data in the sources - I do not map the rest of the police force areas, to transparently map the data listed in the primary sources. Once such missing information is available, we could add its corresponding police force area coordinates to the map in ArcGIS.
I populate the map with a "base map" layer (bookmarked and zoomed in on the "United Kingdom") and the layer of "Police Force Authority Boundaries." I add the final layer - the "Relative Scale of Arrests" - by uploading the CSV file with the total arrests per police force. I visualize this layer in the form of circles, colored in red, with a size proportional to the number of arrests per area versus the number of all arrests. The circles in gray indicate an authority where arrest data is unavailable.
Figure 13. The map of Total Arrested Persons per Police Force Authority during July-August 1981 Riots. Link to the Map.
Retrieving and Mapping the Arrests Data of 2011
For Primary Source 2, I extract the data highlighted in yellow (Figure 14), which includes the same categories of the police force area and the total number of arrested persons.
Figure 14. Primary Source 2 - Data on 2011 Riot Arrests.
The source includes data for 19 police authorities, including 3 unique ones - Cambridgeshire, West Mercia, and Northumbria. Unlike in the 1981 source, the data on 9 police force authorities (Hampshire, Humberside, Lincolnshire, Durham, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Surrey, Cheshire, Cumbria) is unavailable - as the police force might not have provided it, or such data was not recorded.[81]
I perform the same layering steps as in Primary Source 1, now using the data from Primary Source 2. As a result, I produce a map which can be explored in Figure 15.
Figure 15. The map of Total Arrested Persons per Police Force Authority during the April 2011 Riots. Link to the Map.
Re-Mapping by Using Interviews of 2011 Riot Participants
The maps in Figures 13 and 15 portray the numbers documented by the Home Office in 1981 and 2011. While the total numbers of arrests are presented in a tabular and spatial form in the primary sources and in the maps I created, both can be argued to reinforce a reductionist view of the uprisings, marginalizing the voices of the protesters.
I proceed to consult a secondary source, "' The biggest gang'? Police and people in the 2011 England riots," which includes the interviews of people who took part in the 2011 riots across multiple locations (London, Birmingham, Manchester, Salford, and Liverpool).[82] I start the process of re-mapping - placing these interviews spatially in ArcGIS, using the same base map as in the previous two maps, and adding a layer named "Interviewed Riot 2011 Participants”.
The map (Figure 15) includes 14 data points, each defined with a person's age, race and gender, and place of origin. Once we click on the data point (on "Read more"), we can read the person's interview response, shedding light onto the motivations behind supporting and joining the riot of 2011 - portraying the ongoing tensions between communities across the U.K. and police forces. The previous two maps fail to account for and represent such perspectives.
However, the data behind the map in Figure 16 also poses a limitation we should consider if we are to compare it with the map of arrests in Figure 15 - the interviewed participants of riots 2011 had not been arrested during the events,[83] though their motivations to riot are likely similar due to facing the problems of police violence and systemic racism in the U.K.
Figure 16. The map with interviewed participants of 2011 riots in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Salford, and Liverpool.
Side note: Due to a technical limitation, I cannot compare the maps in Figures 15 and 16 with a slicer feature (e.g., Figure 11). Such visualization can help represent both maps as equally valid sides of comparison - with the mapped voices of rioters being viewed as important as the official Home Office data on people arrested during the riots.
Using available data from interviews of non-arrested riot participants might not accurately represent some of the causes of the rioting of people who police had arrested during the events. However, the incorporation of such data can be justified, as it can be argued to produce the social good for the underprivileged communities of people in the United Kingdom, people of color in particular, who are often disproportionately affected by the actions of police forces in their communities.[84] The mapping of such data in comparison to the official data on arrests during the riots is a way to re-narrate the public perception of why the riots had occurred in the first place and highlight the issues of racial injustice, such as occurrences of systemic police racism in the U.K. Such an approach relates to examining history more critically by recognizing how the history of riots was narrated by the people who had such power or had been influenced by the people in power to do so, emphasizing the particular, limited view of the historical events.[85] Though a comparative approach I employ can be viewed as flawed as it considers different kinds of data (records on arrested vs. non-arrested protesters) regarding the contemporary context of police reforms and policy-making towards a more equitable society in the U.K., such an approach is appropriate to highlight the legacies of police injustices, and re-consider the prevalent “criminal” narrative of the 2011 riots.[86]
Summarizing the Mapping of the Data Sources
We can see how numerical data with ties to geospatial data (e.g., police force areas) can be mapped to portray a more complex narrative of historical events such as the riots of 1981 and 2011. However, it is important to consider the origins of such tabular data and the perspectives it reinforces - such as the emphasis on the amounts of arrests during the riots rather than the protesters' motivations behind the events. As we noted, mapping can be used to comparatively challenge such prior emphasis and represent protesters' motivations as equally valid amongst other types of data on the riots.
Footnotes
[76] “Data Downloads | Data.police.uk.” Police.uk. https://data.police.uk/data/boundaries/.
[77] Peach, Ceri. “A geographical perspective on the 1981 urban riots in England.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 9, no. 3 (1986): 396-411. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.1986.9993541.
[78] Ibid.
[79] “PERSONS ARRESTED in SERIOUS INCIDENTS of PUBLIC DISORDER.” Statewatch.org. https://www.statewatch.org/statewatch-database/persons-arrested-in-serious-incidents-of-public-disorder-in-the-1/.
[80] The Home Office. “An Overview of Recorded Crimes and Arrests Resulting from Disorder Events in August 2011.” GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/an-overview-of-recorded-crimes-and-arrests-resulting-from-disorder-events-in-august-2011.
[81] Ibid.
[82] Tim Newburn, Rebekah Diski, Kerris Cooper, Rachel Deacon, Alex Burch & Maggie Grant. (2018). ‘The biggest gang’? Police and people in the 2011 England riots, Policing and Society, 28:2, 205-222, DOI: 10.1080/10439463.2016.1165220.
[83] Ibid.
[84] Ibid.
[85] Eric Garcia McKinley, “Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ideas about Historical Thinking Can Help Us Understand the Baseball Hall of Fame,” Purple Row (blog), January 27, 2014, https://www.purplerow.com/2014/1/27/5331644/friedrich-nietzsches-ideas-about-historical-thinking-can-help-us.
Here I refer to Nietzsche’s concept of “critical history,” based on interrogating the past, rejecting “forgetfulness,” especially regarding historical events that relate to present injustices, such as racial injustice as one of the causes behind the riots in the United Kingdom. This ethical concept raises the issue of the histories of the past being told by those in power, and the value of critically approaching the past knowledge to overcome the prior power dynamics behind it, and seek justice in a contemporary context.
[86] Karim Murji and Sarah Neal, “Riot: Race and Politics in the 2011 Disorders,” Sociological Research Online 16, no. 4 (2011): 216–220, https://doi.org/10.5153/sro.2557.