David Cameron has just returned from a trip to California, hoping that Ah-nuld's political stardust rubs off on him. He talked with "senior officers from the LAPD, the mayor of LA, and former gang members" about "learning from their strategies."Los Angeles has pursued decades of zero-tolerance suppression policies, and it's led to 11 gangs commiting 17000 violent crimes last year.
Now, the police are finally trying pilot programmes of "gang intervention workers" -- these workers try again and again – often at considerable personal risk – to stop one incident from blowing up into a full-scale street battle. Los Angeles is now on track to see its lowest annual murder rate since 1970.
What people did Cameron speak to -- only the police chiefs, or gang intervention workers as well? If he's serious about avoiding the decades of mistakes in Los Angeles, David Cameron will need to rein in David Davis and his talk of zero-tolerance, police expansion, and prison expansion.
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