Conclusions and recommendations
1. The Home Office
has spent over £10 million on its Ending Gang and Youth Violence
programme, but has failed to effectively evaluate the project.
The Home Office must undertake high-quality comparative evaluation
in order to assess what works best in combating gang and youth
crime and in identifying areas for improvement. This will be vital
in ensuring the ten new priority areas receive the full benefit
of the programme. (Paragraph 7)
2. It is essential
that gangs and their associates can be identified. It is vital
that a unified gang definition is used across the Home Office
and police forces to ensure that police forces understand the
scale of this issue both locally and nationally. Data on gangs,
including their members and associates, and individuals at risk,
should be shared between police forces and other relevant bodies.
(Paragraph 13)
3. In each of the
Ending Gang and Youth Violence priority areas, the statutory and
voluntary sectors need to share information to enable effective
identification of girls at risk of gang involvement. Mentoring
should be provided to identify girls' specific needs, to build
trust and to provide a consistent relationship while the girl
is referred between different statutory services. (Paragraph 16)
4. It is appalling
that 2,409 children and young people are subject to sexual exploitation
in gangs and a further 16,500 children are at risk. The Home Office
recently committed one further year of funding for Young People's
Advocates, but has failed to assess the effectiveness of the programme
or provide clarity around long-term future engagement. An assessment
of their role should be included in the Home Office's next Ending
Gang and Youth Violence evaluation to discover whether this programme
funding is beneficial, and what more can be done to combat gang-related
child sexual exploitation. (Paragraph 24)
5. It is lamentable
that such limited progress has been made in identifying and risk-assessing
young people linked to gang members. Every Chief Constable should
appoint a lead officer to take responsibility for mentoring and
training on combating gangs. This lead officer should also address
the needs of gang-associated individuals at risk of sexual exploitation.
(Paragraph 25)
6. It is shocking
that London, while experiencing the most gang-related violence
of any area in the country, has obtained only fourteen gang injunctions
in total. The Home Office should produce a league table of gang
injunctions on a six monthly basis. The lead officer on gangs
in every police force should be responsible for a continuing programme
of peer reviews within the police to ensure the efficacy and increased
uptake of gang injunctions. We hope that our successor Committee
will monitor this issue to check whether or not these changes
have taken place. (Paragraph 30)
7. The Committee welcomes
the launch of the national voluntary scheme to reduce the number
of no-suspicion stop and search powers. It is vital that forces
undertake local consultation work to ensure that local complaints
processes are accessible to young people of all backgrounds, to
help restore young people's confidence in the complaints system.
A league table should be introduced by police forces, followed
by a monthly pro forma which should be completed for the Home
Office. The police should also report to the Home Affairs Select
Committee with the progress they have made on this matter. (Paragraph
35)
8. It is clear that
young people feel that their experiences are not taken into account.
The Home Office's annual evaluation of the gangs programme should
also include statements from local lead police officers stating
what work they have completed on gangs and stop and search, alongside
young people's responses. (Paragraph 36)
9. We should accept
that children as young as seven are at risk of gang involvement.
The Committee believes that primary school anti-gang education
programmes should be expanded. In every school where there is
local knowledge of gangs, a senior teacher should be nominated
to coordinate the school's anti-gang measures and ensure that
relevant figures come in to the school to talk about gangs. (Paragraph
42)
10. The Committee
recommends that the existing work of local organisations that
are well supported and have grown from the resident communities,
such as Gangsline and the SOS project, should be expanded. The
Home Office should ensure that detailed evaluation is undertaken
of projects deemed to be examples of best practice, in order to
create models that can work for communities across the country.
The Home Office should develop interactive online tools and the
use of social media in order to gain the input of local communities
on what can be done to combat gangs. (Paragraph 49)
11. Programmes with
records of turning around the lives of young people in gangs and
with entrenched behavioural difficulties need to be commissioned
more consistently. The Government should expand support for mentoring
programmes that focus on gang-affected young people. While it
is vital that work is delivered in partnership with statutory
and voluntary agencies, a key factor in the success of many programmes
is their separation from local criminal justice agencies as perceived
by the young people. (Paragraph 54)
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