[2] The terms of reference for the enquiry were "to inquire urgently into the serious disorder in Brixton on 10–12 April 1981 and to report, with the power to make recommendations".
Lord Scarman stated that "complex political, social and economic factors" created a "disposition towards violent protest".
According to the report "institutional racism" did not exist, but positive discrimination to tackle racial disadvantage was "a price worth paying".
[1] The theme of the Scarman Report was broadly welcomed, accepted and endorsed by politicians, police commissioners, the press and community relations officials.
The debate in the House of Parliament to mark the publication of the Scarman Report on the 26 November 1981 had as its theme "law and order" and the then leader of the Liberal Party, David Steel, argued that "urgent action" to prevent a drift into lawlessness was necessary.
While both the Conservative and Labour speakers in the parliamentary debate on the riots accepted the need to support the police, substantial disagreement centred on the issue of what role social deprivation and unemployment had in bringing young people to protest violently on the streets.
[13] The Scarman Report sought to locate the riots in the social, economic and political context of the acute deprivation in Brixton at the time.
Lord Scarman identified the causes of the riots in the pathology of the Caribbean family, in the question of bilingualism amongst Asian children and in the undefined problem of policing a multi-racial society.
[14] According to the report: "Without close parental support, with no job to go to, and with few recreational facilities available the young Black person makes his life the streets and the seedy, commercially-run clubs of Brixton.
"[14] In his recommendations Scarman accepts that "hard" policing, such as stop and search operations, would be necessary in the future in areas characterised by severe social problems.