First Draft

17 year old black boy, Shaquille Johnson is content with his quiet life. He lives with his younger sisters and mother in a small council flat in the secluded area of Roehampton, South west London. Shaquille and his family moved into the 2 bedroom flat after their mother couldn't keep up with the bills when they lived in a 4 bedroom house in Kingston.  His father died of cancer when Shaquille was twelve years old since then Shaquille has vowed to stay out of trouble and look after his mother and younger sisters. He keeps his head down and minds his own business, he is hardworking and puts his family first. Shaquille is In sixth formstudying Maths,Physics and IT a levels But when he finds out that his sister has been raped by a local gang, his quiet life is turned upside down.

 

 

Second Draft

A young boy aged 18 is part of a street gang in his local area. He has troubles at home with his mother and abusive step-father, which is why he begins to rebel and commit crimes in order to look after his two little siblings Casey and Tyler. 

 

He is the 'foot solider' of the gang and has been ordered to set someone up due to late payments on a drug deal. He is given a gun as his weapon of defence and threat with leads him to trouble. He then decides to shoot the victim due to confrentation which he then caught by the police and is charged for murder at the age of 15 years old.  

 

After 3 years in prison, he is let out and is ready to start over again. He moves into his own flat and gets a job in order to continue his new life. His old gang try to lead him back to them. His friend is in trouble with another gang member from the gang which then leads to Tyrone trying to step in to help and sort out the situation, leading him as a threat to the gang and gets him set up. He is instantly killed in his own flat alone. 

 

Third Draft

 

Jamal, a seventeen year old boy has grown up in London, His parents migrated from Jamaica to give their children a better life. His father died at a young age, resulting in this , his mother has had to take up 3 jobs in order to provide him and his sister with basic essentials. He is very hard working and enjoys his education which gained him a scholarship at a private school in Wimbledon. He currently lives in a council flat in Roehampton. The gang culture in his area is on the rise and effects local residents. At the age of 13, he was targeted by a local gang who assumed he was wealthy due to his school uniform. One of the olders of the gang saw his weakness and took advantage of this situation, offering him some brotherly guidance. At first he's apprehensive because of his experience with male figures in his life. After the passing of Jamal's father, his mother been involved in abusive relationships. Jamal begins to hang around with Marcus a lot more often. Despite having no involvement in gang crime , Jamal begins to become a target of the stop and search. Being educated Jamal begins to question the validity of this; whether it is justified or not. This feeling of being victimised grows within him, fuelled by Marcus.

Jamal believing that with social network and his intelligence he can make real change without the violence, whereas Marcus sees it the other way. Being a gang member he's spent a lot more time on the streets and seen a lot more of the negative side of the police than Jamal who has just been inconvenience by stop and search a couple of times, whereas at the start Marcus has had time to get angry and seen the brutality of the police, not just stop and search. Marcus nurtures Jamal and shows him the extent if the problem what Jamal thought was an inconvenience to be unfair showing him the extent of that and how other things relate to that. 

Marcus was also similar to Jamal when he was younger until his older cousin was killed in a stop and search incident the police were too brutal, resulting in him hitting his head on the pavement causing internal bleeding which lead him to die. He was sent to hospital but died in the ambulance. Since then Marcus lost all trust in the police, causing him to turn to crime.