Experts pan Zac Goldsmith proposals for gang member free school

In his Crime Manifesto, published earlier this week, Goldsmith outlined plans to work with local communities in London to set up a free school that “explicitly” supports children in or at risk of falling into gangs if he is successful in the London mayoral election in May.

As part of the plan, he would also seek to get London football clubs to sponsor it as an academy. However, the idea has been criticised by figures in the youth justice sector who fear the idea could make the situation worse.

John Pitts, Professor of socio-legal studies at the University of Bedfordshire's Vauxhall Centre for the Study of Crime, believes the plan risks stigmatising young gang members. He said the idea could also create an environment that is potentially difficult to manage.

?“I would have thought the better approach would be to work out how disadvantaged young people can be integrated into the best mainstream schools,” he said.

?Penelope Gibbs, chair of the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, said there is a danger that if you put children who are at risk of crime together they will see themselves as having developed their criminal identity?.

“They are more likely to think of themselves as offenders or at-risk of offending if they are given that label,” she said.

“That is not to say that we don’t want better education and that those children who are or at risk of being in gangs don’t need extra support, but placing them together in a school rings alarm bells for us.”??

Mat Ilic, justice director of Catch22, said that in order to cut serious youth crime, young people involved with gangs must not be fenced away from mainstream education. He has called instead for initiatives that help integrate young people positively into local communities to be prioritised.

??Andrew Neilson, director of campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform, said it is unclear whether the school would be part of the youth justice system or part of the education system.

“If [Zac Goldsmith] is talking about getting control of the youth justice budget and then diverting it into preventative schemes and one of those schemes might be looking at school provision then that would be something we would in principle welcome, but the detail then matters.”

In Goldsmith’s manifesto, he also outlines plans to take a “zero tolerance” approach to gang leaders, crack down on people selling knives to children and invest in prevention work.

He said he will lobby government for more control over the £229m youth justice budget so London can spend the money “preventing children turning to crime”.

“I want to see local authorities investing in services such as parenting programmes, health visitors, domestic violence advisers and substance misuse services,” he said.