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Personally, I believe humiliation and intimidation to be an important tool in police discipline. It sounds awful when I put it that way, but when a kid has nothing to lose, and no discipline at home, there aren't many other motivating factors for them.

Surely the motivating factors would be community, family, role models, something to lose, etc?

I don't see how external discipline, or intimidation, would have made a difference for your 'friends'.

There's some good debate online right now about segregated society, leaving the lower classes behind, etc, at the moment. It's a much more fruitful area for change in my opinion.