'Safe houses' for ex-gang members

Young people may need access to a secret address where they can be protected from reprisals if they try to leave a gang, a report by the Commons' all-party Home Affairs Select Committee suggested.

The study, which examined young black people and the criminal justice system, also said ministers should comsider alternatives to full exclusion from school for troublemakers. It cited "internal exclusion" schemes where disruptive pupils attend school but are kept in a separate classroom and not allowed out at break times as one possible solution.

Committee chairman John Denham said: "We think there needs to be a closer attention on the way we can enable young people to escape from involvement in criminal groups and criminal activities. Safe houses were one of the ideas that we thought was worthy of study.

"Young people's behaviour changes and there are many cases where young people who will have been involved in crime will wish to move out of it.

"There is a practical challenge about how we support a young person who wants to move out of it if they are living in a community where varying factors work to draw them back."

The committee's inquiry examined why young black people are more likely than other races to be stopped by police, arrested, convicted and jailed.

The report claimed social exclusion was a key factor for their over-representation in the criminal justice system.

It continued: "Witnesses ... drew attention to a lack of father involvement and to other parenting issues," adding that 59% of black Caribbean children were in single-parent families compared with 22% of white British children. It said that in the absence of a positive male role model, many young black men chose to emulate negative and violent lifestyles popularised in some forms of black music and in films.

But the MPs said censorship of "gangsta rap", hip hop music and other art forms would be "undesirable and impractical".