The real solution to youth crime is improving children's lives

For anyone who cares deeply about young people, this may sound positive. But we must never lose sight of the realities on the ground, and how such proposals - that often make calls to be ‘tougher’ – never improve the already tough conditions that our young people are living through.

At Kids of Colour, a Manchester-based youth work organisation, we support young people whose lives have existed only through the age of austerity measures: a form of state violence. Whilst Lammy speaks to the importance of ‘early interventions’ for children, we remain enraged that this way of thinking is always driven through the criminal justice system, meaning no matter how it is wrapped up, it is always about punishment and blame.

For those of us working with young people on the ground, the only ‘early intervention’ we want to hear about is an intensive, radical effort to make the conditions of young people’s lives better.

Currently, children across this country live in food insecurity and endure inhumane housing conditions, they are educated in under-resourced schools in which exclusions are part of the fabric, and they wait years for any support around their mental health or additional needs. But rarely do we hear state outrage at that, just calls to be ‘tougher’ on young people, punishing them for trying to survive under a failing and violent state.

Never far behind the blame of young people is the blame of parents, seen in this paper’s commitment to expand the use of Parenting Orders: another way for the state to distract from its own violence and responsibility. In our work, I am always in awe of the efforts parents have made to seek help for their children, and always enraged by the response they receive.

For example, when we arrive to support parents in ‘criminal’ trials, we meet parents with life stories defined by desperate pleas for help, parents who have done everything within their power to access support. Those pleas – whether to schools, the police, or children’s services – have either gone unmet, or have forced their children to engage in interventions so aligned with punishment that they only work to further criminalise.

But of course, it would be careless of me to suggest that the conditions our young people are having to endure simply lead them to committing ‘crime’. We must remember that most young people are not causing harm in society, despite so many government initiatives that imply a journey of ‘criminal’ behaviour is inevitable, especially for children from racialised and working-class communities.

‘Tough on crime’ has long been an election-winning strategy, and a threat must be constructed to create the moral panic that supports such a strategy. Lammy notes imprisonment "will always remain essential for the most dangerous offenders".

But under this racist, classist injustice system, we must remember that ‘danger’ is constructed. The stories of young people that come to you via headlines are often so far from reality. Take the Manchester 10 case, or other Joint Enterprise cases, that send children to prison for longer than they have lived, for harms they did not commit.

Whilst there is some recognition from Lammy that prison harms children and we must reduce time in custody, that will never happen for ‘dangerous’ populations, and ultimately, for Black young people, they have long been constructed as such.

The growing infrastructure of institutions involved in early intensive punishment and surveillance of young people and their loved ones does not serve the needs of the community. Any ‘interventions’ that hold the problem of ‘crime’ at their centre will not do justice to our young people. Any ‘interventions’ grounded in punishment and the expansion of state power do not change the conditions the state has left us in.

This is yet another approach that takes us further away from investing in or even talking about what we need to build beautiful lives for young people. That takes us further away from life-affirming initiatives grounded in care, joy and justice.

____________________

Dr Roxy Legane is the Director of anti-racist youth work organisation Kids of Colour, a steering group member of Northern Police Monitoring and holds a PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University.

LBC Opinion provides a platform for diverse opinions on current affairs and matters of public interest.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.

To contact us email opinion@lbc.co.uk