AP Photo

The scenes of violence that emerged from London last week—the burning buildings and rampant looting, the police and firefighters under attack—were undeniably upsetting, but that’s not to say they were unfamiliar. The riots not only bore a strong resemblance to several recent instances of violent crime in the United States, they hearkened directly to the incendiary outbursts of racial violence that plagued this country from 1965 to 1968—from Watts in Los Angeles, to Detroit, to the H Street corridor in Washington D.C. But if the expressions of unrest are following the pattern from that previous era, the policy responses likely won’t be—and that bodes poorly for any hopes of sustainably ending the violence sometime soon. 

Governments of the 1960s and 1970s...