Youth worker Deale Babb with young men from the 2XL project in South London, which aims to give young people practical alternatives to getting involved in crime. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe
Denzel is "a hero", he says. "I go anywhere." A confident 20-year-old, he swaggers around the youth club on the estate in south London where we meet, bumping shoulders with younger boys. By his own definition, he is a "bad man". He started stealing and selling drugs when he was 16 and for the past four years he has been wrapped up in a cycle of violence and crime.
It's a "roundabout", he says, and one that led him straight into jail for robbery at 17, although he was back on the street in two months. Denzel lifts up his shirt to proudly reveal two scars where he was stabbed in the ribs last year and nearly died. But this hasn't deterred him from his work. "I just want to make money until I'm 25 and I'll come out [of the gang]."
Despite cuts to almost every other facet of its spending, in February, the Home Office announced £18m to tackle knife, gun and gang-related youth violence. But the idea that knife crime is being addressed papers over a simple fact, that youth crime results from poverty and the lack of opportunity available to young people in poor communities. As youth unemployment rises and youth services are cut, the problem can only get worse.
And gangs are becoming more and more popular among younger children. Denzel is well aware of the danger of being a role model to younger kids, and knows his lifestyle is attractive to them. "I might not try to influence these guys on purpose," he says, waving to a group of younger boys who are playing pool, "but they see what I'm doing and there's money. They go to school, they go to college and they see nothing."
In Southwark, the south London borough with one of the highest crime rates in the UK, community safety officer Jonathan Toy understands the destructive impact that older gang members have on younger boys in the community. He has been working on combating gang violence for 12 years but recently has seen a rise in the numbers of young people getting involved in gangs. As a result, for the past 18 months his team has run an early intervention scheme, Home Visits, which goes to the homes of young people identified by police or youth services as being on the fringes of gang activity. It pairs the young person with a mentor, who offers emotional support to steer them back into education or work.
Jamie, 15, from Camberwell, south London, was excluded from school for fighting and sent to a pupil referral unit that he stopped attending after a week. "I was always angry, I just wanted to punch things," he says. Alienated from his peers and with nothing else to do, he started hanging around on the street. Soon he was running drugs around the neighbourhood for the older boys. "If someone went to buy stuff I would just go give it to them and get the money and give it back to the boys."
His destructive behaviour soon had an effect on his family, particularly his mother. "My life was hell," she says. "He would get up and go out. I wouldn't know where he was, if he was safe." She would try to stop him going out but she then became a target for the gang.
When two boys tried to assault her at the door of her flat, the police intervened and put the family on a rehousing scheme. In the next 12 months they moved nine times. Feeling isolated, they returned to Camberwell where, without any further support, Jamie drifted back into gang behaviour.
Eventually he was referred to Home Visits by the local youth offending team. Toy and his team arrived at the family's home and together they worked out a strategy to get Jamie away from the gang. The family moved out of the area again and three months later Jamie started attending a full-time specialist education centre where, with the aid of a dedicated mentor, he gets help managing his drug habit and anger issues. He is now working towards a plumbing apprenticeship.
The success of Home Visits lies in its targeted strategy, offering individuals an alternative path back into education and eventually into work. Toy says this council support is instrumental to the project's success. "Not only can we say 'I'm here to help' but we come with a degree of authority. We can say we will not tolerate this and there are other consequences that we'll consider," he says.
Relocating gang members is not always the answer – it can leave a void in the community that others will fill and it can put a person involved in a gang into another high-risk, low-income area. In Lambeth, one programme targets groups of youngsters within the community rather than individuals. Youth worker Julia Wolton developed the programme when a gang-related execution happened outside a youth centre she ran in Lambeth. She has been running the project for seven years and it now operates under the name 2XL, as part of youth charity Brathay, working with Camden, Hackney, Lambeth and Westminster councils and in Liverpool and Bradford.
The programme uses peer mentoring to stop young people turning to crime by offering practical alternatives to gang activity. Deale Babb is one of 2XL's peer workers. "I've been through a lot," he says. Aged 18, he was arrested for armed robbery and spent three years in prison, but came out determined to stay straight and has been working in his local youth club in Lambeth for the past two years. At the beginning of this year, the council closed the club and Babb lost his job. But 2XL has managed to keep the club running one night a week and tonight some boys have already trickled in.
This group are on 2XL's 32-week advanced leadership programme for "gang-affected" young people. All of 2XL's programmes operate on a voluntary attendance basis but it is easy to understand why these boys come back each week.
When Babb stands up to greet the group an injection of warm energy pulses through the freezing hall. He corrals them together for a photograph and even the most sullen and reserved get involved. "I've known these kids since they were little boys," he says with pride. "They know I'm not a fool."
In the time that they have been working with 2XL, their schools have reported increased attendance and those out of work are being helped back into it. "These kids aren't gangsters," he says, but they face the same pressures that drove him into crime. "If 2XL weren't here there would be nothing."
But projects like Home Visits and 2XL are in a precarious financial position. "Youth services are not protected by law as a statutory service," explains Wolton. "Education law stipulates that a council must provide 'adequate and sufficient' youth services – but there is no definition of what is adequate or sufficient." As Lambeth council cuts £11.85m from its children and youth services this year, 2XL has lost the final quarter of its two-year funding stream. Without consistent funding, the project could lose its potency, says Wolton. "We are getting better but as we get better all the money is going away."
How then will the Home Office's new £18m funding to tackle knife crime benefit these programmes? "We will be trying to hit that money like 50,000 other organisations," she says.
Wolton acknowledges that the real issue is not guns, gangs or knives, though they are dangerous symptoms of the problem. "Young people are getting hit from every single direction. If you don't give people any choices, opportunities and aspirations what are they supposed to do?"
For Babb, who will lose his job at the youth club again once funding runs out this month, the situation is more poignant. "I feel like there's no hope," he says, "but I don't want to tell the kids that."
Source http://www.guardian.co.uk/
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