DISQUS

I very much agree with the comments in many of these posts. I work for a voluntary agency who run a project providing support for people wishing to leave gang crime and the phone has hardly stopped ringing with calls from journalists. Most of the angles they are looking to run are simply feeding a high-octane media 'scare' around the issue and possibly (inadvertantly perhaps) re-inforcing the gang crime culture. The first Dispatches film on monday evening with the A&E consultant was very good. It's a shame they chose to focus on America for solutions as alot of the work highlighted (e.g. schools talks by ex-gang members etc) already goes on here in the UK (and the production team should have known this as they spoke to us during the course of making this documentary). But I'm not all sure about Kids, Knives and Broken lives. As has been said before, I'm sceptical about the authenticity of some of what was said and it simply gave some young people a platform to promote a negative picture of themselves - which they will regret in a few years time.

However, for me personally, the worst thing is that there are plenty of young people who have grown up facing severe disadvantage (care, poverty, drug-misusing parents) who NEVER get involved in gang crime, offending, knives, guns, drugs, robbing etc and go on to make the very best of their situations. Can we give these young people a bit more air time please?