The War on Gangs or a Racialised War on Working Class Black Youths by Stafford Scott

In this essay, TMG is able to share and examine the Metropolitan Police’s secretive ‘gangs’ database, the Gangs Violence Matrix.  In so doing it becomes evident that this is a racialised database; that captures not only the names of those alleged to have been involved in serious youth violence, but also the details of their peers and associates with little or no evidence of them having used violence or being gang member. In this piece TMG argues that police have been allowed to infect the entire public sector with its own unique form of institutionalised racism.  As a result the States preoccupation with the gangs narrative has meant that they have failed to find effective interventions to address the rise in serious youth violence that we are witnessing all over the UK.