The first force to use the government employment programme to address the under-representation of ethnic minorities in the police will be Avon and Somerset - which has to double the number of officers from ethnic minorities from 35 to 60 by 2004.

Police in Bristol will next month provide a dozen unemployed black and Asian people on the New Deal with a 26-week trainee position to prepare them to pass the police's initial recruitment test.

Jobcentre staff will tell black and Asian people who have been unemployed for more than six months about the programme and encourage them to consider a career in the police when they come to sign on. A poster campaign will be directed at areas where ethnic minorities are concentrated.

The New Deal will subsidise the training of recruits, providing 35% of the scheme's £200 a week salary.

But employment groups claimed the move will further stigmatise black and Asian people entering the police because they will be seen as special cases by trainee officers.

Other forces, including the Metropolitan police and West Yorkshire, intend to follow the programme with a view to adopting a similar approach.

At a police open day in St Paul's, a predominantly black area of Bristol and the scene of race riots in 1982, unemployed young Somalis rejected the offer of riding in police cars for fear of being recognised and told police they would not join if it meant serving in their neighbourhoods.

"There was peer pressure not to join and a feeling that employment services and the police were using the event as a photo opportunity," said Dawn Woods, New Deal manager for Bristol and South Gloucestershire.

Avon and Somerset police said that distrust of the police has contributed to the force's failure to employ minority officers.

Black employment groups said the plan would further stigmatise black and Asian people entering the police.

Sajid Butt, policy officer of black training and enterprise group, said forces should be using their training budgets to fund positive action schemes as standard practice. "Targeting people on New Deal should be a last resort."