Safer London Projects

Safer London Foundation is a registered charity with the aim of making local communities in London a safer place with reduced levels of crime. Steps have been taken to help in London boroughs that experience higher levels of problems and crime with the young person.

A wide range of campaigns and projects are initiated to help promote a safer city and community environment, give support to the victims of crime, and take action to prevent crime. Reducing and preventing youth crime is one of the areas they are prioritising to make sure London is a much safer place to live and work. By working with young people that are likely to offend, it is possible to encourage them to make the more positive steps in their lives and choose a life-style that is crime free.

Many of the programmes are designed to create engagement activities, campaigns, and projects that are able to help with empowering the young person to take the necessary action to make positive changes in their daily life. By tackling an array of issues related to violence and crime it is possible to see significant changes in the community. 

A range of projects are constantly in play throughout the city, including the Youth Engagement, Empower Programme, and Safe and Secure – Gang Exit Programme.

Safer London Foundation has been able to work closely with the local organisations, communities, and the Met Police force to assist in the process of victim support and crime prevention. Mentoring is a further service offered to the young people involved in a crime. The idea behind the mentoring is to help the ex-offender progress into further training or education and from there progress to gainful employment in an area of their interest.  

Restorative Justice for the Young Offenders

RestorativeThinking Limited is set-up to specialise in a wide range of restorative justice programmes to help those in prisons, children’s centres, and schools. In conjunction with Odd Arts a variety of arts are relied on to help with transforming, inspired, and challenging the lives of the more excluded and vulnerable people. 

This company has been able to create a complete restorative justice intervention and prevention toolkit which was developed with the youth in mind and is presented to the target audience by the trained members of the Youth Offender Service. 

A restorative toolkit is design to cover all aspect of this process in the criminal justice system, and identifying how the young people can most beneficially use this process to assist in resolving their personal crimes or offence. A further quality of relying on this approach is to pass on the understanding, knowledge, and skills from this process which are helpful in the future to mange conflicts or daily challenges, and become more effective at solving problems without confrontation. 

Depending on the circumstances, a restorative programme is delivered in a one on one environment or small group of 5 to 8 young offenders. An introduction to the more specialist arts comes from Odd Arts who are know to offer some of the most effective courses in this area for the community and criminal justice settings. 

Beyond creating the actual kits for the restorative service, they are able to assist in several different areas, from training the probation staff, prison staff, and YOS staff to providing a parenting programme. 

In order to effectively use the toolkit in the various different services, it is first necessary to make certain the ideal level of training is provided. By providing a complete training course it will be much easier to use this type of service as part of the arsenal in the rehabilitation process. A desired outcome of this type of teaching and programme is that the offender has a better appreciation of restorative justice, manage day-to-day issues using this process, and likely to have better victim awareness. 

A further area covered relates to a parenting programme which is designed to help the families start to reconnect in the hope of provide a more loving and supportive living environment in the future. By getting involved with the support networks it comes much easier to understand the behaviour of the children and learn the more productive steps for helping in the future. 

Restorative Thinking was established in 2012 by director Lesley Parkinson to work with teachers, school leaders, advisers and consultants in order to better achieve its aims.

Young Offender Rehabilitation Champions

Young offenders are a much-overlooked but serious problem in the United Kingdom. When thinking about the correctional system in place, there are clear issues that need to be resolved. However, there are a few prominent figures that stand out as champions for young offenders and their rehabilitation.

Keith Towler, Children’s Commissioner for Wales

Having held the position since the 1^st of March 2008, Keith Towler has campaigned extensively for the rights of young offenders in Wales. His first annual report in the role of Children’s Commissioner, he discussed the much-criticised system in the United Kingdom where ten year olds could be given custodial sentences.

He has strived to change the system in his country to better service the needs of young offenders, in order to avoid the chance of them reoffending and to aid their rehabilitation and reintegration into society. He stated that children’s services are often seen as “soft targets”, and are likely to have funding cut.

Towler said:”It costs £35,000 to keep someone in a young offenders’ institution and £75,000 a year to run a project for 125 young people in a community which might prevent them from going into the young offenders institution in the first place. So in terms of thinking how we best use our money youth service and youth work provides a fantastic return.”

Steve Holliday

As the Chief Executive Officer for the National Grid, Steve Holliday has significant influence within business circles. He has used his position to initiate the National Grid’s Young Offender Program, designed to rehabilitate young people who have been through the correctional system.

So far, his efforts have seen 2,000 people pass through the system, and the rate of reoffending has been marked at 6% - an incredible 49% less than the national percentage quoted in statistics.

Holliday’s other main achievement has been to unite 22 prisons or other correctional facilities with over 80 companies in a similar sector to the National Grid. Their combined efforts have been directly responsible for this aid given to young people who are sorely in need of help to stop being trapped in the so-called “revolving door” of crime and prison. With an overwhelming number of young people falling into crime, and with over 75% of young offenders being repeat offenders, programmes such as the Young Offender Program are vital for helping to save young people.

Reducing Youth Offences with the Help of Community Intervention

Even though there is a lot more young people (aged 10 to 14) going into custody due to the seriousness or repeat crimes, latest statistic show that 70% plus of offenders are likely to re-offend within the first year of being released. If an issue of the nature isn’t tackled head on it is likely to result in a very destructive and damaging cycle for the youth that can be hard to break. 

Many organisations and charities are calling for more initiatives to be implemented in an effort to lower the youth reoffending rates. A variety of schemes looking at early prevention and helpful intervention are certain to be highly desirable. By involving the many different organizations able to provide expert advise on mentoring programmes, support, working with families, and provided effective mental heath care, it should be possible to take the steps in the right direction to reducing the rate of re-offending.

In an effort to lowering the volume of children that start to enter the court system at a young age, more effective measure need to be implemented to help with punishing and tackling the low level crime and anti-social behaviour without needing to completely criminalise and put the young person in the system.

A fresh approach to help with dealing these issues is likely to come from relying on the private sector, voluntary groups, and charities in order to provide the more effective measures. By relying on the community based, innovative, and unique rehabilitation programmes it is believed that tackling reoffending is achievable in the long-term.

Other ideas include looking for alternative options to custodial sentences or school expulsion to hopefully stop the child entering the undesirable path of crime. A further area to look includes offering improved access to finance and housing support while also giving better access to educational and employment opportunities for the young offender.

Beyond the house, financial, and educational requirement of the young people, a further measure that needs resolving relates to the causes that initially resulted in the difficulties and what action can be taken to make certain the young person is able to get their life fully functional in the wider community.

With the Government hoping to set-up a completely new road-map for the future, it is hoped that the local authorities, health and educational services, youth offending teams, and community safety workers are able to help in the process of creating a more effective approach for coping with youth re-offending.