Prof John Lea from the University of Brighton will provide a brief review of the types of official inquiry into the major riots in the US and England since the 1960s. He will illustrate the decline of welfare citizenship and the transition to a neoliberalism in which the state abrogates responsibility and concern for poverty and marginality.

John Lea was one of the founders of the left realist approach to criminology. He is currently Professor of Criminology at Middlesex University, where his research interests include policing, organised crime, business crime and the historical development of crime and criminal justice institutions. John is the author of  Crime and Modernity: Continuities in Left Realist Criminology (2002) and is Visiting Professor in Criminology at the University of Brighton.