we have the Evening Standard's campaign to
rid the City of its most heinous douchebags.
checkit: Evening Standard
Evening Standard comment: Readers rally to tackle our gang culture
We have featured some of the businesses and social enterprises started by former gang members with grants from our Dispossessed Fund: they have had a huge response from readers
Published: 18 October 2013
Updated: 11:58, 18 October 2013
The extraordinary response of this paper’s readers to our Frontline London campaign is proof of Londoners’ will to tackle the problem of gangs. We have featured some of the businesses and social enterprises started by former gang members with grants from our Dispossessed Fund: they have had a huge response from readers. This is not charity, it is enterprise. Work and new economic prospects are the only real ways for young people — almost all men — to find a life beyond gangs; if that work comes from businesses they have set up themselves, then that can offer even more to the rest of the community.
But this is just a start. For we are under no illusions about the scale of the issue. Senior police officers have been frank about their inability to solve the gang problem: the best they can do is to turn the tide against the gangs and try to keep them in check. Police say there are 250 gangs in the capital, responsible for half of all London’s shootings. We cannot simply lock them all up, even if it were possible. Moreover, these people need help: the young men in these gangs are frequently from backgrounds where they have suffered huge trauma, witnessing violence and even murder at a young age. So we have to work on positive solutions.
