Community-led approach needed to tackle youth violence in UK, report finds – The Guardian

Young people

Calls for police powers to be rolled back in favour of funding for youth services and mental health initiatives

Mon 24 Apr 2023 19.01 EDT

A community-led approach is needed to tackle serious youth violence, such as more funding for youth services and mental health initiatives while rolling back police powers, a report has said.

Education is central to the fight against serious youth violence, which must involve an end to school exclusions and the removal of police from schools, according to Holding Our Own: A guide to non-policing solutions to serious youth violence.

The report written by nine organisations working across human rights, youth services, racial justice, mental health and policing calls for a radical rethink of how the government tackles the issue across the UK.

It comes as polling revealed that 69% of people said the government should look for solutions to the root causes of youth violence rather than relying on policing, which disproportionately targets black people, and young black men and boys, in particular.

More than three-quarters (76%) of people said they were concerned about sexism and racism in policing.

The poll of 2,015 adults across the UK was carried out by Walnut Unlimited in March 2023. It found that more than four in five members of the public (81%) are concerned about police officers abusing their power.

Almost three-quarters (74%) would like to see more funding for youth services, which have faced severe funding cuts over the past decade, the report says.

Martha Spurrier, the director of Liberty, said: Whatever our postcode or the colour of our skin, we all deserve to grow up with the support and care we need to thrive.

But thats not the reality for many young people growing up today. Communities have been stripped of resources, and in place of real support for young people the government has simply handed the police more and more powers to harass and target people particularly young black people.

The result is a failure to tackle the root causes of serious youth violence, and a lifetime of trauma for those young people targeted by dehumanising police tactics like strip-search and stop and search.

The report says the government has continued to hand more powers to the police through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and the public order bill despite an erosion in public trust.

This report shows an alternative is possible. By rolling back police powers and investing in the solutions that our communities need, we can ensure that no young person is subjected to abuse of power by the police, and that everyone is given the best chance in life, Spurrier added.

More funding for mental health care is also needed, the report says. Amy Wells, the communications manager for the National Survivor User Network, a charity that supports people who have lived experience of mental distress, said: Wed like people to understand where a call for more mental health services can be problematic, because of the harm people can experience within the system, including through coercion and police involvement.

What we want to see is investment in community-based approaches to mental health support. In our network there are hundreds of user-led grassroots groups working within their communities to meet specific needs in ways that larger organisations and statutory services cant or wont.

They offer support emotional, cultural, material, practical, financial that also seeks to alter or alleviate social conditions that drive distress or mental ill-health, including marginalisation and oppression. However, they are extremely under-funded and under-resourced we want to see this change.

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Community-led approach needed to tackle youth violence in UK, report finds - The Guardian