Last night I watched a program on gun and knife crime amongst Britain’s teenagers, as it appears channel 4 are hosting a series of these programs at 11 each night. What it entailed was members from different youth agencies, the police, councillors, anyone who works with these 'gangs' putting across their experiences to the board, this board was or government officials as far as I’m aware. Watching it I was amazed by the diversity of projects in these local run down areas of Manchester and Leeds, most projects had no funding what so ever and were purely running from the founders own funds. What appeared to me is that it is great there are these projects but none are intertwined, there is no communication between the youth workers and the police this communication was minimal at best and all the different agencies had different approaches to dealing with the problems at hand. This is great but what I want to know is why don’t they all work together, they all have the same goal; they want the young people off the streets so they hopefully are less involved in these 'gangs' the aim is to educate the young people who couldn’t cope with main stream education by putting them on vocational courses; but within this a youth worker was assigned to make sure the young person went. If that course wasn’t suited they would find another this youth worker was out in place as a kinda pastoral role to encourage and support the young person.
As the program showed there are many people of the older generation (by that I mean not of this gang and knife crime generation) who don’t understand, this isn’t just a problem for gangs but most young people, there was one women who proud fully explained that this year she had three young people put in prison for hanging out on the corner of her road (this was seen to her as anti social behaviour and they were issued as ASBO) the sad thing was when asked she couldn’t explain what they had done wrong, her response was "doing the things they do" “ as soon as they stepped foot around that corner I was watching and called the police, I don’t want that trouble”. This got me thinking and slightly angered (I know I wasn’t there so cant really make comment either way) but I think its all to do with lack of education the media has sent the country into a media frenzy all young people are going to mug you. This has been there for years I don’t need to expand, but I think if there was some kind of education for these people maybe one or two steps removed from this new culture they would understand a little more. If there were more community projects to show that not all young people are going harass you, that maybe people would see this generation in a different light. Don’t get me wrong I don’t like the fact Britain’s teenagers are perceived to all be in gangs and in some areas of the country more often than not they are but I don’t think we need to go straight in there are blow up a big stink about it more work something out from the inside, change perceptions rather than telling them they (the young people) need to change as we all know that doesn’t work. And why should they? If it can be controlled and managed no one gets hurt, were you dictated to you what you could and couldn’t do when you were a teenager?
Finally last bit, last year there was huge media coverage of the two young boys stabbed to death by their peers, this is a horrible loss of life and not justifiable at all but I just want to leave you with the thought: How many stabbing do you think there were in total last year (not by young people the total amount more than two?)? and does that mean we still have a huge child knife and gun problem?
As the program showed there are many people of the older generation (by that I mean not of this gang and knife crime generation) who don’t understand, this isn’t just a problem for gangs but most young people, there was one women who proud fully explained that this year she had three young people put in prison for hanging out on the corner of her road (this was seen to her as anti social behaviour and they were issued as ASBO) the sad thing was when asked she couldn’t explain what they had done wrong, her response was "doing the things they do" “ as soon as they stepped foot around that corner I was watching and called the police, I don’t want that trouble”. This got me thinking and slightly angered (I know I wasn’t there so cant really make comment either way) but I think its all to do with lack of education the media has sent the country into a media frenzy all young people are going to mug you. This has been there for years I don’t need to expand, but I think if there was some kind of education for these people maybe one or two steps removed from this new culture they would understand a little more. If there were more community projects to show that not all young people are going harass you, that maybe people would see this generation in a different light. Don’t get me wrong I don’t like the fact Britain’s teenagers are perceived to all be in gangs and in some areas of the country more often than not they are but I don’t think we need to go straight in there are blow up a big stink about it more work something out from the inside, change perceptions rather than telling them they (the young people) need to change as we all know that doesn’t work. And why should they? If it can be controlled and managed no one gets hurt, were you dictated to you what you could and couldn’t do when you were a teenager?
Finally last bit, last year there was huge media coverage of the two young boys stabbed to death by their peers, this is a horrible loss of life and not justifiable at all but I just want to leave you with the thought: How many stabbing do you think there were in total last year (not by young people the total amount more than two?)? and does that mean we still have a huge child knife and gun problem?
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