Events

Labour Party Conference

Labour Fringe - 'Damilola Taylor: Six years on - tackling youth crime'

Summary

Vernon Coaker, the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety, said today that more needs to be done to tackle the problem of youth crime, particularly in terms of enforcement and engaging the community to help solve the problem.

He was speaking at a Labour Party Conference fringe meeting entitled, 'Damilola Taylor: Six Years on - tackling youth crime'. Also speaking at the meeting were Richard Taylor, of the Damilola Taylor Trust, Heidi Watson, Chief Executive of the Damilola Taylor Trust, David Morris of Be Safe, Sean Larkins, Director of Communications of the Youth Justice Board and Linda Lawrence, founder and Director of the think tank Kids Count, who chaired the meeting.

In an attempt to soothe concerns that the Government had taken its eye off the problem of youth crime, Mr Coaker talked about how he believed the problem of youth crime should be dealt with, putting particular emphasis on the need for tough enforcement of the law. He then pointed to the current progress through Parliament of the Violent Crime Bill as a sign of progress in this area. Mr Coaker stressed that he believed the Bill would make a difference.

In his speech, Mr Coaker argued that often a lot of crime had been prevented by the existence of a strong community base which was able to stand up against crime and let it be known to youths that crime would not be tolerated. A big reason why enforcing the law had now become such an important issue was that communities had lost this ability to stand up against crime. Mr Coaker argued that under the pressures of globalisation, "communities' social glue is quickly eroding". This left a gap in enforcement into which the Government, alongside organisations like Be Safe and the Damilola Taylor Trust, must step into, providing their own social glue.

The need for strong communities was part of a wider theme of dealing with youth crime at a grassroots level. With respect to this issue, he acknowledged the work being done by organisations like the Damilola Taylor Trust.

Speaking earlier, Heidi Watson, chief executive of the Damilola trust, pointed to the 'Access to Medicine' program that her group had run, awarding as a prize, a six year degree course for youths from underprivileged backgrounds. She noted that the Damilola trust works in partnership with Kids Count, a group that has been effective in identifying successful local projects and promoting them.

However, the extent to which her group could help youths was severely restricted by the lack of funding available.

In the question and answer session that followed the meeting, when the issue of funding was raised again, Mr Coaker said that while money was available, many projects had experienced difficulty in surviving beyond an initial period and that in some cases funding wasn't reaching the bottom. In an attempt to deal with the problem of funding, Mr Coaker pointed to the creation of a three way alliance between the corporate sector, the community and faith organisations.

This would hopefully help provide more funds by involving to a greater extent the three sectors. A National Offender Management Service had been set up which would provide guidelines and laws to smooth the marriage of the three different sectors.

Another issue concerning funding in the question and answer session was that many groups found the paperwork required to gain access to major funding was too consuming for small organisations, particularly for those organisations which are voluntary

In finishing his speech Mr Coaker reminded the audience that while it was easy sometimes to think of the issue of youth crime in terms of "doom and gloom", there were positive advances being made and this should act as a source of encouragement to all those concerned.

Speaking earlier, David Morris, Head of the Be Safe organisation, talked about certain aspects of violent crime that had to be considered. Firstly there was the need to understand weapons and their use from a youth perspective. He flagged up as an example, the use of "risk assessment" by children when deciding whether to carry knives. While not wrong in itself, such a system often lead to children to make the wrong decisions as they reasoned wrongly or all the groups involved in dealing with violent crime amongst youths try to understand perceived threats to themselves being greater than they really are. It is therefore imperative that what risks a youth perceives to exist and to try to reduce those risks.

This argument that youths needed to be understood better before we condemn them was encapsulated well in a quote by Sean Larkins, Director of Communications of the Youth Justice Board, "if we demonise kids too much we run the risk of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy".

This echoed comments made earlier by Sean Larkins, who stressed that the issue of youth crime be put into perspective. Figures for violent crime were subject to great confusion and could often be misrepresented. He used as an example a study by Morris showing that one of the biggest concerns of adults questioned was of children hanging around on street corners yet this in itself was not an offence. Youth Crime is a real problem, to which there exist "no silver bullets" but by strengthening the community, through effective law enforcement and how it prevents crime by understanding the position of children, is of the utmost importance.