Select Committee on Home Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300 - 319)

TUESDAY 19 DECEMBER 2006

CURTIS BURK, CEAN JOHNSON AND ANDREW PORTER

  Q300  Bob Russell: So your background, lifestyle, has that involved you in getting into criminal activities?

  Cean: No.

  Andrew: It is not really background. It is choosing to do it.

  Q301  Bob Russell: You have chosen to do it? Do you wish now you had had different life chances?

  Andrew: What do you mean by that? If I did not do it?

  Q302  Bob Russell: Are you proud of what has happened so far?

  Andrew: Yes.

  Bob Russell: You are? Okay.

  Q303  Chairman: Can I just follow on from that a bit because it is something that has come up with other groups of people we have talked to? In the group of friends that you have got how many live in families with mum and dad there? If you think about your group of friends, how many of them have grown up in families where they are living at home with their mother and their father? If you look round at your friends do a lot of them come from families where either their mum is not there or dad is not there? That is the first question. The second one is, do you think that has made any difference to how people have grown up?

  Curtis: Yes.

  Q304  Chairman: What do you think about it, Curtis?

  Curtis: Yeah, quite a few people I know have got backgrounds like their dad has gone off, some stuff like that, arguments and stuff like that, fighting, all sorts.

  Q305  Chairman: Do you think that makes it harder growing up?

  Curtis: Yeah. It just depends how you take it, really.

  Q306  Chairman: But everybody growing up has some problems at home. If you have got problems at home is there anybody you can turn to?

  Curtis: Friends.

  Q307  Chairman: If your friends are involved in trouble of one sort or another and you turn to your friends does that make it any more likely that you will get involved in trouble too?

  Curtis: Of course.

  Andrew: The thing is, if you turn to your friends for family problems and they are in some mischief and so on, they are really making what they are doing, just like you choose to go and do it or not. You can go to them and talk about it and they are in some trouble or they are going to do something but you do not really have to do it just because you are talking about personal stuff or something. You just choose to do it.

  Q308  Chairman: I am asking the question because we talked to another group of young people and they were saying that if they had difficulties at home sometimes a gang or friends or whatever become like your family and then they give you a bit of that emotional support or love, they were talking about, which you are not getting at home. I do not know whether that is a big issue for young people or not.

  Andrew: Yeah, it is. I can talk to my friends more than I can talk to my dad.

  Curtis: Yes.

  Andrew: Really, it is like your friends are like your brothers or sisters or whatever. It is like your second family.

  Q309  Chairman: Cean, do you say that?

  Cean: I do not know.

  Chairman: Okay, fine.

  Q310  Mr Benyon: Curtis, you are 15; is that right?

  Curtis: Yes.

  Q311  Mr Benyon: Are you in school?

  Curtis: No.

  Q312  Mr Benyon: This is a question for all of you. When somebody is excluded from school—

  Curtis: Expelled.

  Q313  Mr Benyon: Expelled, what happens? Where do most of them go? Do they go to a referral unit, on the streets, where?

  Andrew: They probably stay on the streets—

  Curtis: They go to the next school.

  Andrew: Yes, but you probably stay on the street. You will probably be out of school for two days or something and so on and jump into links, like in our city there is YIP and stuff like that you can go to whether you are in school or not, so it is a college for you.

  Q314  Mr Benyon: What can be done to keep people in school longer, not excluding them? If you have done something wrong at the moment—

  Curtis: If you have done something wrong you should just send them home and tell them that they have got to have, I do not know, a couple of days off school for what they have done, not exclude them.

  Andrew: It is like they see you getting in a fight every day, being angry—

  Q315  Mr Benyon: They have had a warning, had another warning.

  Andrew: Yes, that has been going on, and expelled. A lot of that has been going on. "You have not been excluded". "I can be as bad as him", so really when you get expelled it shows people that if you do that you will be gone, you will be losing your friends in school, so there is no real point stopping it because if you are stopping it there is going to be more and more trouble, more violence.

  Q316  Mr Benyon: So it is important that people have a line that they know in school, that if they cross that line there are—

  Andrew: Yeah.

  Q317  Mr Benyon: But obviously there must be more to be done? It is better to keep people in school?

  Andrew: Yes, you can probably keep them in longer and give them more chances and stuff like that, or give them more options.

  Q318  Mr Benyon: What was it at school that had an effect on you, for example, Andrew?

  Andrew: Probably because the teachers speak to me like I am a kid or something. They talk to you, looking down on you.

  Q319  Mr Benyon: Why do you think many more young men than girls get excluded and get into trouble?

  Andrew: Because they are unruly—not unruly, just like—like, say, I am telling you something and you are not really listening, you are just saying what you are trying to say. You are not listening to me but you expect me to listen to you. Most of the guys do not tolerate stuff like that. It is like if you are not listening to them there is no point them listening to you, so in a way you are going to be rude and stuff like that and walking out and doing what you are doing.


 
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