Youth Riots- Opinion piece.

As Director of OCVYS I have clearly watched very closely to see how Oxfordshire's youth sector has responded to the riots and we continue to watch the political fall out following the events of last week. I know some local politicians smiled to themselves, patted themselves on the back last week that violence and looting didn't hit Oxfordshire in any sustained way, but I don't think we should be patting ourselves for doing such a good job just yet. 

The latest stats I could find online suggest over 2400 crimes were committed (07/08) by some 1500 young people in Oxfordshire, whilst 19% of those is for violent crime and 15% criminal damage, 26% theft and handling of stolen goods. 15% go on to reoffend, meaning some 225 young people are regular offenders in the County, or are likely to reoffend, whilst clearly overall offenders in the year are high enough, essentially to start a very major riot. Why is this important? Ultimately, because the reality is that a majority of the young people rioting across Cities were probably in those very same categories. All it takes sometime, is a trigger. This time, luckily, it didn't trigger Oxford's young people, but don't think it never will. It did in 2009 with feuding gangs in East Oxford,(http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/4582460.EAST_OXFORD__Fueding_gangs_led_to__mayhem_/) and in 2010 at the Regal, where a fight broke out between 30 youths, gang fighting in Kidlington in October 2010 and for those that can cast their mind back, and were around, the riots that happened in Blackbird Leys in the 1990s. 

Some very real, absolutely terrifying challenges we have ahead of us is how the thousands of young people who are now accessing youth services will be supported beyond the 31st August, when most of Oxfordshire's youth workforce will be made redundant. The early intervention hubs have become, in practice, multiple needs services working with children, young people and their families most at risk. They simply do not have the capacity to deliver to the thousands of young people that have depended on them for years. How are we going to support these important endings in the relationships of these young people with their youth workers, for some of whom they were their only source of support and confidante? So far, despite a thorough consultation about how this should be approached by OCVYS which we provided to the Council, there has been a lack of strategic approach to referrals. As one organisation put it 'we're having clients referred to us that our service is not even for, we can't deal with this level of referrals and the L.A. seems desperate to get you to take their young people, even though our service is not appropriate for them'.

The data across the County suggests that correlation between youth crime and provision is a definite. Since the Youth Service has been in Rose Hill, it has dropped 33%. Now Rose Hill will be an outreach hub, and the Residents Association has taken on a youth worker. For an estate that has in the past been served by a full time, qualified and experienced manager and a team of substantial and part time youth workers, mitigating the impact on these young people is going to be intensely difficult.

I challenge every statutory, and voluntary organisation in the County to think about this very carefully and consider their own role in increasing services for young people most at risk and tackling young people's disallusionment with society. I can't blame them really, there are not many adults I know at the moment that aren't disallusioned with our broken country: corrupt politicians fiddling their expenses, corrupt media tapping communications, corrupt bankers stealing the countries money, getting a bail out of tax payers money, then using it to give themselves bonuses. We have a system in which the people who were supposed to provide us with our moral compass have failed our society, and I can't imagine what kind of role model this provides to young people. As one organisation I visited last week put it, we need to change our culture back, to making what we are important, instead of what we have. 

What I do know is arresting these young people and giving them unduly long sentences for their crimes to make an example, may deter others from following suit, but we will create a group of young people even more embittered to society for penalising them more than the next person.

We can only break this cycle by addressing the root causes. Has anyone, at all, actually talked to these young people yet and found out about what they think?