In August 2011, the fatal police shooting of a man in Tottenham triggers riots, arson, and looting that spread across London and into other English cities within days. This Al Jazeera Inside Story panel gathers criminologist John Pitts, journalist Mehdi Hasan, and reporter Martin Bentham to argue over why. Pitts frames the violence as an eruption from communities already worn down by poverty and unemployment, not simply anger over one shooting. Hasan brings government austerity measures into the argument, tying cuts in low-income areas directly to the scale of the unrest. Bentham focuses on policing itself, describing a breakdown of trust between officers and residents that left police unable to hold the streets once looting started. The panel also weighs social media's role, useful for organizing young people quickly but just as useful for spreading rumor and encouraging copycat crime. No side gets the last word: the discussion ends on disagreement about whether harsher sentencing or addressing inequality is the actual fix, leaving the underlying causes as contested as the riots themselves.