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When it Comes to Dealing With Urban Gangs, ‘Big Society’ is Far More Than a Buzzword

Nick de Bois says you won't prevent knife crime by spending money on billboard advertising.

By Nick de Bois

12 Nov 2011, 10:58

There is nothing more inane or senseless than national campaigns aimed at young people, which attempt to tackle gang membership or knife possession. The young man in a gang walking along with other members has listened to music that glamourises knife possession, lived by a code of respect which requires knife possession, and possibly been raised by a household that has not taught him the basic fact that knife possession is wrong. So the idea that this same young man will look up at a billboard with a Home Office stamp on it and suddenly have a pang of conscience, drop his weapon, break contact with fellow gang members and set his life back on track is wholly naïve, and unnecessarily wasteful.

Being a member of a gang necessarily involves a rejection of the state in favour of the membership of a smaller pseudo-community with it’s own social standards, culture and vigilante policing (with guns, knives etc.). These groups must be infiltrated and broken up; they can’t simply be dictated to from a poster on the side of the road.

Yet Jacqui Smith, the former Labour Home Secretary, decided that it was worth pumping £3 million pounds of taxpayer’s money into the ‘It doesn’t have to happen’ campaign in May 2009 in order to produce exactly this effect. Their evidence that this approach worked? In questionnaires young people answered that viewing these posters made them want to carry a knife less (opposed to ticking the box saying ‘this poster made me want to threaten more people with a knife’).

So as hospital admissions for young people with stab wounds increased exponentially during the Labour years, particularly in North London, the then Home Secretary could take comfort that at least their billboards weren’t encouraging gang membership and knife possession. £3 million pounds well spent then.

It is encouraging that the recent Home Office report on gang membership at least suggests a change in direction of travel, and commits to ‘providing support to local areas to tackle their gang or youth violence problem’. Theresa May has fully accepted what Iain Duncan Smith has been preaching since the formation of the Centre for Social Justice; we need a national strategy for local implementation of early intervention. The only limiting factor on this ambition is, as ever, funding.

The  report pledges that the Home Office will ‘provide £10 million in funding in 2012-13 to support up to 30 local areas to improve the way mainstream services identify, assess and work with the young people most at risk of serious violence, with at least half this funding going to the non-statutory sector’. That makes a spending commitment of around £5 million nationally.

In my constituency of Enfield alone, the Department of Education spent £3.8 million in 2010-11 on Pupil Referral Units and Behavioural Support Services combined. If the Government is really serious about commissioning non-statuatory organisations to deliver early intervention services, they have to make local councils realise that increased funding in early intervention will ease the pressure on spending elsewhere, particularly in PRUs, and investment should reflect this. If local councils are made truly accountable for their budgets, they should realise the benefits of prevention as opposed to treatment of the problem.

The role of the state in commissioning third sector organisations and charities to deliver early intervention services is absolutely crucial in the transition from the last Government’s approach of doing what they think should work to this Coalition’s evidence-based approach of supporting what already works.

We  should empower local commissioning of  the middle-aged man on the estate who is on the other side of gang membership to start a boxing club for young disillusioned men. Award local  tenders to social enterprises on a pay-by-results basis for the number of gang members with criminal records they get into stable employment.

The way to unlock funds is to make local areas more accountable for success and failure (ie costs of crime and prison) which would lead to more investment in prevention.

It's the key to unlocking capital.  It's what the Cabinet Office are proposing in the area of drugs policy, prisons and mental health and the common factor to all these areas of ‘Broken Britain’ is they involve breaking a cycle of negative behaviour that has a hugely disproportionate effect on communities.

This is not some kind of policy-wonk pipe dream either, this has been going on for the past few decades, the third sector just needs the kind of big contracts only the state or local councils can give to start mass producing their astounding results. Chance UK, an early intervention charity that mentors vulnerable 5-11 year olds exhibiting behavioural difficulties, recently won Britain’s Most Innovative Charity at the Third Sector awards. We should be begging them to take on some of our social worker’s most difficult cases, and yet they have to work tirelessly to wade through bureaucratic loopholes and funding squeezes to get access to the individuals whose lives they know they can turn around.

At the same awards ceremony Barrington Wright  was awarded Volunteer of the Year for his work with the SOS programme run by the St. Giles trust in Croydon, which worked with young people caught up in gangs to help them break away from their damaging lifestyle and move towards more positive futures. Barrington’s son was helped by the project which encouraged him to take on a caseload of around a hundred disillusioned and vulnerable young men, many with drug and mental health problems, helping them to get in to housing, education and employment. People like Barrington do exist; we just need to make sure we direct our resources into supporting these projects instead of replicating them in the state sector.

When it comes to tackling gang membership, the stamp of the state is policy suicide. The strengthening of civil society was originally proposed as the way to fix Broken Britain, and here we have a key arena in which the Government can truly move away from the big state approach, if they are bold. £5 million is just not enough, although the unleashing of social investment through Big Society Capital in April will help. If we invest in early intervention in the third and voluntary sectors to tackle gang membership now, we will realise massive benefits in the long term in reduced offending, strengthened family units, more active communities and, perhaps, a Bigger Society.