A lack of leadership
Young black teens need more positive support, says Ben Bowling
Wednesday June 20, 2007

Who will lead the effort to reduce the over-representation of young black people in the criminal justice system?

to address the alarming number of black people flowing into the criminal justice system.
The report is most remarkable for what it does not say. Absent is New Labour's weary language of popular punitiveness. The word "tough" is nowhere to be found. There is no call for "zero tolerance", harsher sentences or more prisons. Instead, the committee calls on the government to "review, revise and redouble" its efforts to prevent young black people from ever entering the criminal justice system. It recognises that preventing criminalisation lies in social justice not criminal justice, and its focus is social exclusion, poverty, substandard housing, inadequate amenities, drugs, community mental health and the need for positive role models - broad social problems that have fallen particularly harshly on young black Britons.

soon, 75% of young black males will be on the DNA database, and expresses concern about disproportionate arrest rates and the dramatically increasing black prison population. However, the committee never quite grasped the corrosive effect of police practices that unjustifiably target black people.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2107043,00.html