8th April 2009ePolitix.com speaks to Superintendent Mark Bird of Hackney Police about gang culture in the UK and the Chance UK mentoring scheme with young people in Hackney.
Question: Can you tell us about the mentoring programme that Hackney Police is undertaking with Chance UK. What are the main aims of this scheme?
Mark Bird: Hackney Police got involved with the mentoring scheme which is undertaken with Chance UK based on the fact that what Chance looks to do is to work with children primarily between the ages of five and eleven that are probably on the periphery of getting into trouble, not only with the police but in school and a few other things as well.
In terms of why Hackney Police are getting involved with the scheme, it is really a way to give something back to the community that we serve. Most of the children are referred to us from either Hackney or Islington at the moment so we are keen for our staff to get involved with that with the view to giving something back.
Question: How did you first become involved with the Chance UK mentoring scheme?
Mark Bird: About five years ago I heard of Chance UK. At the time I was an inspector serving on the territorial support group, the TSG. It is always an opportunity to do exactly what I just talked about, so I put myself forward, did the training and then was allocated a young lad from the borough who was aged nine at the time. Since I have come back to the borough as a superintendant here I have got my staff involved with it and now we have a number of mentors that are working through Chance.
Question: Has the scheme provided police officers in Hackney with a better understanding of the challenges facing young people in the community?
Mark Bird: It is a little too early to say. Most of the officers that have now started – it is not just police officers, it is support staff as well – are just about to embark on doing the mentoring. Having said that it is my fervent wish that it will provide a better understanding around what most of the young people in the borough go through on a daily basis. I am sure it will, but it is too early to say yes definitively.
Question: Do you believe the early interaction between police and young people can help breakdown mutually negative stereotypes?
Mark Bird: Definitely. The situation, not just in the Met but in other forces around the UK as well, is that we have moved away from that safer neighbourhood policing style and gone into cars and gone from A-B, and there is a huge area of youth that have grown up not really having had any positive interaction with the police.
This early interaction in terms of safer neighbourhood policing but also giving something back through mentoring, I wholly support and I see it as positive in terms of breaking down those stereotypes.
Question: What are the main reasons behind the rapid rise of gang culture in Britain in the last decade?
Mark Bird: There are numerous reasons and it would be more prudent for an academic to give you the definitive list as to why there is probably a stronger gang culture now in Britain.
Some of the things certainly are very obvious in terms of social deprivation and limited life chances for some young people. It has been said to me before that if it does not happen in a particular youngster's street or in the neighbouring street then it does not happen at all.
Certainly, my own experience of mentoring has shown that young people, certainly in some of the inner London boroughs do have a limited scope of what is out there in terms of the world beyond their own. There are a number of reasons. Social more than anything else as to why people are probably more involved in gang culture now than they have done previously.
Question: Do you believe there is sufficient understanding about gang culture? What are the common misconceptions?
Mark Bird: It is a difficult question to answer. Some of the misconceptions are that it is definitely linked to postcodes. There is some truth behind that but then equally there are other reasons as to why people do not necessarily stay in one particular area. Also, some of the common misconceptions are that gangs are clearly defined. They are not.
My own experience is that there is a whole raft of different definitions of what a gang is in the first place. Also, the fact that sometimes we cannot identify the people we believe to be in a gang. The ones that cause us more problems are the younger people that affiliate to those gangs as well. They are not actual gang members but aspire to become in gangs as a result of which they commit crime and anti-social behaviour as well.
Question: Do you feel that central and local government is doing enough to deal with gang culture?
Mark Bird: Both central and local government are doing as much as they possibly can at the moment. There are a number of initiatives that have come out not only recently but over the last few years which try to look at the make up of gangs and what can be done around that.
Certainly my own local authority, Hackney, has been hugely supportive in what they have tried to do around the gang culture because whilst they do not necessarily commit a huge amount of crime it comes back down to the perception of fear and public reassurance and that is why the local authority have done as much as they possibly can about it. This is linked in with not just the police but also with the third sector and voluntary groups as well.
Question: A Centre for Social Justice report has stated that there needs to be an integrated community-focused approach in giving young people an alternative. Do you believe this is the best way to tackle inner city gang culture?
Mark Bird: I do not know if it is necessarily the best way to tackle it but I do think it is a positive step in the right direction. Locally we have looked at whether or not we could actually get not only the community but also our partners more closely aligned so that we do have that integrated focussed approach because it is about being able to react quite quickly in terms of indentifying young people who are vulnerable to potentially going into gangs or even being involved with serious youth violence and how we can tailor response to those individuals. The report by the CSJ is a positive step in the right direction.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd
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