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Rioters celebrate the site of a burning car in Vancouver June 15, 2011.John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail

Young – the average age is 21 – male, and largely from Surrey.

That's the image that emerges from the information Vancouver police have released about 60 people they say should face charges in the Stanley Cup riot of last June.

Bill Pitt, a criminologist at McEwen University in Edmonton, cautions against too many assumptions from this early information.

The numbers are too small, he says, given the thousands who caused trouble in downtown Vancouver, and none of these people have been convicted. "These are the ones that were caught in the headlights," he says.

Still, Monday's information provides a first overview. Here's a closer look:

21 of the 60, or 35 per cent, are from Surrey compared to 12 or 20 per cent from Vancouver.

The independent review into the riot released in August hinted at this. "This was, in a sense, a regional riot," concluded authors Dennis Keefe and John Furlong, suggesting the regional transit system fed people into the city core.

Now the first snapshot confirms it. Christopher Schneider, an assistant sociology professor at the University of British Columbia, suggests a lack of attachment to Vancouver may explain some conduct. "It's not their own backyard. It's somebody else's. In that way, there's less ownership."

Robert Gordon, head of the school of criminology at Simon Fraser University, finds it notable that Surrey had its own public venues for watching the playoff game, but, obviously, residents left for Vancouver "where the real action was taking place."

50 men, 10 women

Mr. Schneider says the gender breakdown falls along patterns set in the 1994 Stanley Cup riot. In essence, rioting is a young, male activity. Mr. Gordon notes that most predatory street crime is committed by males between 14 and 26, so the gender breakdown is not surprising – nor is the average age of 21.

Youngest male: 16; oldest 52. Youngest female: 17; oldest 22.

To Mr. Schneider, the women involved are exceptions worth studying. Young people, usually male, are more inclined to this kind of behaviour, he says, because they lack the responsibilities such as family and jobs that older people know would be threatened by criminal activity. The 52-year-old man, a resident of Port Coquitlam, according to a police release, is known to police and has a lengthy criminal record for theft, break and enter and sex offences. In his case, police are recommending charges of participating in a riot and break and enter.

Mr. Schneider has a one-word description for the women here: "outliers," basically an observation that they are numerically distant from the rest of the data.

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