1. “The rioters are mindless”

There is nothing mindless about coordinated attacks on areas away from the police, avoiding residential targets, and going for commercial premises. People in some of the areas hit have described seeing older men telling younger people what to do. The undoubted criminality in what is happening requires some street knowledge.

2. “It’s like a warzone/the middle east/apocalypse”

No, it isn’t. It is terrifying to sit in your home with gangs of young men outside, ripping up your front yard, hurling missiles, setting fire to cars, burning buildings. Lives are being put at risk – and there is a grave danger somebody is about to be killed. But this is not like a warzone, or an intifada or a biblical destruction of the world. We must keep our sense of perspective.

3. “The police should crack down”

Just remember it was tough policing that started this whole episode – officers shooting dead a man they believed was an imminent threat. Remember too how furious people get at police using kettling at demonstrations, charging with horses, wielding their batons and hurting people as they did at the G20 protests. The police are under pressure to use reasonable force – what that is changes according to public mood, it seems.

My own view is that the police in this country do an impressive job and unjustly carry the consequences of a much wider social dysfunction. Before you take a breath of sarcasm thinking “here she goes, excusing the criminals with some sob story”, I want to begin by stating two things. First, violence and looting can never be justified. Second, for those of us working at street level, we’re not surprised by these events.

Twitter and Facebook have kept the perverse momentum going, transmitting invitations such as: “Bare shops are gonna get smashed up. So come, get some (free stuff!!!!) F… the feds we will send them back with OUR riot! Dead the ends and colour war for now. So If you see a brother… SALUTE! If you see a fed… SHOOT!”

If this is a war, the enemy, on the face of it, are the “lawless”, the defenders are the law-abiding. An absence of morality can easily be found in the rioters and looters. How, we ask, could they attack their own community with such disregard? But the young people would reply “easily”, because they feel they don’t actually belong to the community. Community, they would say, has nothing to offer them. Instead, for years they have experienced themselves cut adrift from civil society’s legitimate structures. Society relies on collaborative behaviour; individuals are held accountable because belonging brings personal benefit. Fear or shame of being alienated keeps most of us pro-social.