red state, blue state

The good people at the Guardian listened to David Cameron:

"These riots were not about poverty. That insults the millions of people who, whatever the hardship, would never dream of making others suffer like this."

and wondered if he was right. They decided to see "what would happen if" they overlayed the addresses of people charged with "riot"-related crimes "with the poverty indicators mapped by England's Indices of Multiple Deprivation, which cover very small areas."

The map is coloured by the Indices of Multiple deprivation, from blue (richest) to red (poorest).

Click here to use the interactive map

Liverpool University urban planning lecturer Alex Singleton took a look at the early data. He found

• The majority of areas where suspect live are deprived - and 66% of them got poorer between 2007 and 2010, when the last survey was published
• 41% of suspects live in the 10% most deprived places in England

England riots: was poverty a factor? by Simon Rogers, The Guardian