Initial Proposal No.2

1. Which topic area is this proposal for?
Crime and the Media.

2. What is the suggested focus?
Focusing on the link between youths and knife & gun crime - how does the media portray certain sections of society?

3. Do you have an idea for a question/problematic?
Is the media's stereotyping an accurate acount of British youths?

4. Why would you choose this?
Because I'm really interested in crime and what goes on in and around society. I read and hear a lot about knife&gun crime, therefore I feel that I already have an advantage.

5. Do you have any concerns or are there any limitations to this proposal?
I'm not sure whether or not I could succesfully answer this question, due to the need of accurate statistics etc.

6. Can you rate it on a sliding scale 1- 5 (5 being great proposal, 0 being lousy proposal)
31/2 - I think this proposal is a good one, however I need to ensure that I get the right information, both theory and evidence in order to successfully answer my question.

The Home Office

The Home Office website, outlines how they intend to reduce youth crime as currently "Youth crime harms communities, creates a culture of fear and damages the lives of some of our most vulnerable young people."

This website sucessfully outlines the factors which, they feel, have caused youth-crime to increase over the past few years. They are:

- troubled home life
- poor attainment at school, truancy and school exclusion
- drug or alcohol misuse and mental illness
- deprivation such as poor housing or homelessness
- peer group pressure

As you can see, these factors are all constantly reinforced by the governments views of youths, particularly black youths, and also that of the media's who reguarly issue stories in newspapers about how society should be aware of the increasing rates of crime coming from youths.

Websites

To begin with, I am just going to gather some information about youth and gun/knife crime in London, and how the media portrays youths in negative ways.

I think that this website may prove useful in the research stage of this project:

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/crime-victims/reducing-crime/youth-crime/