Last year's shooting of 15-year-old Billy Cox on Valentine's Day was particularly gruesome. Although Billy was still only a teenager, the killer cold-bloodedly aimed the gun at his chest as he stood on his doorstep on Fenwick Estate in London's Clapham North. Billy's younger sister, Elizabeth, heard the gunshot as she was arriving home. She tried in vain to save her brother's life.
Worse still, the event was not a one-off: Billy's was the third teenage gang killing in the capital within two weeks. James Andre Smartt-Ford, 16, had been shot at Streatham Ice Arena on 3 February, and Michael Dosunmu, 15, was shot in his own home in Peckham three days later. In total, gang violence claimed the lives of 27 young people in London last year, of which five were killed in Lambeth.
A meditative yoga session in a slightly dilapidated education centre may seem a world away from this violence, but the classes - only a short distance from Brixton Police Station - are just a small part of a wide-ranging strategy by Lambeth Council to tackle gang violence. Stung into action by last year's shootings, Lambeth appointed an Executive Commission to research the issue, which in turn fed into a strategic action plan called Young & Safe in Lambeth. Presented at a gun crime summit at the Oval exactly a year after Billy's murder, the initiative goes live this month.
The fact the summit drew a diverse contingent of local agencies - police, council, health service, community, voluntary groups and ex-gang members - says much about the plan, which has identified eight key areas where action can be taken (see box, right) and aims to tackle not just the immediate problems of gang violence, but also the root causes.
While some of the proposals may sound predictable, such as the crackdown on drug dealing and a new intelligence-gathering unit, others are less so. Providing training opportunities for young people living on estates with high unemployment and parenting support aimed at families struggling to bring up their children aren't the type of schemes that might immediately spring to mind in such a strategy. Nor is the promise of an additional £1.75m on top of the £3m annual budget that will be invested in youth services over the next three years, which will allow youth clubs to open seven days a week.
For John Readman, Lambeth's divisional director for children's services, the multi-agency approach and the fact it builds on existing facilities are the plan's key strengths. "It's vital to understand that no-one has cracked this yet, and there is no one model that works," he says. "What is clear is that children's services professionals cannot solve it alone. So the plan is a call to action across partnerships, sectors and faith groups, with all of us working together to tackle violent youth crime. We have no statutory requirement to do this, but the localised nature of teenage violence means it's in all our interests to tackle it."
Early starters
What's alarming about the recent violence, says Readman, is the ages of those involved. "Whereas it was typically 19-year-olds, police are now finding 14-, 13-, even 12-year-olds with weapons," he says. "The council boasts five successive years of overall crime reduction. But this plan acknowledges at the highest level that gang violence exists and it sets out how we are addressing it."
How Lambeth fares will be of great interest to its partner boroughs of Southwark, Croydon, Lewisham and Greenwich, which all have similar problems.
Although astutely packaged under the Young & Safe in Lambeth brand, some of the plan builds on the success of existing projects. For example, the council's acclaimed X-it scheme, which provides intensive support through group work, residential courses and leadership programmes to young people living in gang hotspots, is being extended across the borough. Encouraged by the success of the Safer Schools partnership, which saw the introduction of police officers into all of Lambeth's 11 secondary schools, the idea is now being extended into primary schools.
Readman also highlights the input into the strategy from young representatives from the local youth council and secondary schools. "One plea was for more consistent programmes and projects, implying longer-term funding," he says. "They also pointed out that once you get into trouble you get loads of help, but not before. So the existing Positive Activities for Young People, which we're incorporating into the plan, is designed for those young people at risk of getting involved in risky behaviour. Once we've identified who they are, the trick then is about getting in as early as possible and keeping them in the system."
Readman concedes the success of the scheme rests on how accurately such young people are identified, but insists he has faith in the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), the generic assessment process used by practitioners working across children's services. "All of those doing the picking will be CAF-trained," he says.
Brian Paddick, former commander of Lambeth Police between 2001 and 2002 and London mayoral candidate for the Liberal Democrats, welcomes the plan, but says success hinges on reaching the disenfranchised. He worries whether this can be achieved. "Extending youth club opening times is a sound idea," he says. "The problem is too many youth clubs attract the good guys, not those who need the services most. In fact, lots of the young people who commit crimes wouldn't attend a youth club."
For Paddick, affirmative action needs to be taken by the police to make the streets safer. "The reason why some young people carry weapons is because they feel unsafe," he says. By improving the communities they live in, they won't feel the need to carry weapons."
Weapon retrieval
Chief Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police Sharon Rowe agrees that the police has its role to play in making sure weapons don't fall into young hands. "We recently conducted a number of successful high-profile operations and recovered 37 handguns, one machine gun, six rifles, six shotguns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition," she says. "Recovering these weapons has helped reduce gun crime by 41 per cent within the last three months."
Young people across the borough will be hoping this is just the beginning.
LAMBETH'S CRIME STRATEGY
The strategy consists of eight main areas:
- Advice and peer support for parents who are concerned their children are involved in crime
- The establishment of an independent trust, part-governed by parents and the community, that controls spending and support for young people
- Increased use of parenting orders and contracts
- An extra £1.75m to extend youth club hours to seven days a week
- Extension of current youth work to reach the most socially excluded
- Expansion of the X-it scheme, which works in known gang hotspots
- Tailored training courses to boost employment opportunities for young people
- An intelligence-gathering unit for police and agencies to share information about problem families and individuals
YOGA, NOT GANGS
Twelve-year-old Louise comes to the free yoga class whenever she can. "It helps me relax," she says. "I was in a difficult situation at school this week and used a breathing technique taught at the class to calm down."
The class is just one measure set up by Lambeth Council to give young people in areas of high youth crime a chance to hang out in a safe environment and make contact with youth professionals. The scheme also hopes to attract young women who might be tempted to join a gang.
While Louise is not involved with such activity, she is aware of how local gangs can terrorise young people. "Some young people carry knives and needles," she says. "They think that they'll be safe being in a gang.
"Just before Christmas, as we were leaving school, some boys got out of a car and started attacking us with sticks. Now the police patrol the area."
Regular attendee 20-year-old Hayley Littek agrees that life is difficult for many of the girls who attend. Yet she resents the way the media portrays things. "Some young people get involved with guns, but a lot of others do good things," she says. "But those are never reported."
