Shutting the stable door

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith chose to trumpet increased government investment to tackle violence in Birmingham, England's second city.

It's one of several pilot areas which have been chosen for the Tackling Gangs Action Programme, whose aim is to combat knife crime and gun and gang violence.

But Birmingham is also a city where poverty is a day-to-day reality for young and old.

Only last year, after a decade of a Labour government, its Ladywood ward appeared in Save the Children's top 10 child poverty hotspots. Almost half the children there lived in poverty.

What's more, it was the same story in areas of Manchester, Liverpool and London - funnily enough, in many of the very same areas where groups of young people are getting drawn into self-damaging, violent behaviour.

The meagre £5m package that Ms Smith highlighted on Thursday will see a £2m boost for police stop-and-search operations. It will also see £1m going towards a questionable advertising campaign aimed at getting mothers to talk to their children about the dangers of knives.

At the same time, Children and Young People's Minister Beverley Hughes was busy issuing guidelines to schools that call on Britain's overstretched educational professionals to act as gatekeepers, monitoring suspicious behaviour and even social websites and watching out for the "use of extremist language or materials."

But, while schools and mothers may have day-to-day contact with young people, they certainly do not have control over the material conditions which breed alienation in the first place.

The trouble is, as a King's College report on youth crime policy highlighted earlier this week, closing the stable door on crime after the horse has bolted is far easier than heading it off in the first place.

It is quite understandable that education unions have expressed concern at the proposal that their hard-pressed members are to be used to monitor the fallout from underinvestment in local economies and social policy.

They are suspicious that they will be asked to serve as social workers, simply handed extra responsibility without the necessary resources and back-up.

On the fiscal evidence of Thursday's pronouncements, it seems that such fears could prove correct.

As the Home Secretary was announcing more money to tackle the fallout of youth alienation, she touched upon some of the sterling work that has been done in the area of prevention.

Unfortunately, only £1m of her headline £5m is to be granted towards the kind of intensive care that this requires, such as after-school activities and close mentoring with families and children.

In short, projects that reforge the links between young people and society in a positive way and that see the state take an active role in the welfare of its citizens.

All this does not come cheap.

While we do not yet know the contents of the government's impending Youth Crime Action Plan, the omens are not good.

This Labour government has found billions to finance war and stood idly by as big business has plundered billions more.

Now, how about that kind of cash to heal our own back yard?