- Title: Thug Life: The Crisis Facing Young Black Men
- Date: 26th October 2003
- Summary: Gun crime rose by a staggering 35% in 2002, with victims and perpetrators disproportionately black and aged under 25. Reporter Geoff Schumann (a former teacher and leading London DJ) goes out on the streets of high crime, inner city estates, to ask young black men why they are killing each other. The youths say that there is a civil war going on in Britain, while the rest of the country looks the other way. They themselves are suggesting positive solutions but say no one is listening. Geoff is told that until they do, the killings will continue and spread into other communities. Youths in increasingly ghettoised pockets of violent crime in Hackney & Southwark in London and Aston in Birmingham, describe the world they inhabit in nightmarish terms. Shootings and hard drugs are part of their everyday experience. Black youths are also disproportionately the victims and perpetrators of other violent crimes like street robberies and stabbings. The government has reacted by introducing more armed officers in the worst affected areas, but such is the scale of the problem that this force is merely reactive, struggling to contain the epidemic of violence. The roots of the problem remain untouched.
- Description:Investigation into young men.
- Broadcaster:Channel 4
- Collection: Channel 4
- Genre:Documentary and Factual
- Producer:London Weekend Television Ltd.
- Programme Episode:Episode 1
- Transmission Date:26/10/2003
- Rights:UK and Eire
- Decade: 2000s