How we need to love our lost children back to sanity
KIDS living in hell rarely behave like angels, they are the products of their dysfunctional environment.
Socialising agencies such as family, religious and community organisations have grown increasingly irrelevant and been replaced with materialistic ideals.
Groups that used to shape the life of a child have steadily declined and disintegrated, replaced by shopping centres.
Despite their best efforts, our political leaders are looking for answers by asking the wrong questions.
It is not directly “What do we do to stop knife crime?” but “What are the drivers of such violent behaviour”. The knife is not the crime. Children seldom randomly pick up knives and decide to stab people. In my experience it often starts when the child is young.
This spate of killings will pass but for now it affords the attention and opportunity to reflect.
Currently, the debate is cyclical and futile. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan says it’s not his fault, he needs more police. The police say we need more of them. The Government says you’ve had more police but it didn’t make a difference. Meanwhile, children are dying on the streets.
The search for solutions must stretch beyond the police. Aside from outrage, there needs to be a focus on the causes, as well as the symptoms, of these crimes.
This shouldn’t detract from taking knives away from those carrying them, but we can’t ignore the fact that replacing a blade is as simple as going to the kitchen drawer.
Those of us who are more able to look at the world through the eyes of young people who carry knives for protection and status get closer to how they think.
What we are witnessing is a sophisticated type of group mind. Some of our boys are so mentally zoned into a culture of violence. All of my youths know, directly, someone murdered, or at least seriously injured, on our streets. Some have been involved.
How did we get to this place? Slowly. As the influence of parents, pastors and school principals has waned, all our young people speak of a distinct feeling of powerlessness.
The tried and traditional levers and sanctions affecting the development of children are not functioning effectively. For too many, the family bond is damaged and so ruptured we overlook its devastating effects. My young people need something to fight, something to believe in. Like everyone else, they want to be someone, and sometimes that means fighting each other.
It is a sad day when, for some, employment prospects are more plentiful with local dealers selling weed and crack than the only other job on offer at the local barber’s.
Some of the young people I work with speak about the role of their family’s socio-economic status in their life choices. If they’re lucky, they see their parents locked into dead-end, minimum-wage jobs with no security or satisfaction. Knives, they conclude, are a type of urban qualification. As one put it: “Everyone wants to be someone, this is my way.”
Digging deeper, I learned that 85 per cent of my students had never patronised a black-owned business in the past five years, aside from a barber shop. Too many of them carry the assumption that blacks are inferior. “This is how it is,” Adamu told me. “Our business is on the road, we are designed for the hustle.”
I began this work with an agenda to keep black boys from being arrested in their droves.
Sadly, a lot of our kids have ended up in prison, but they started the three-lap race of life two laps behind. For some, it is almost impossible to work through all the scars.
For many of our children, entrance to crime and urban violence is connected to a sense of wanting to be accepted and acceptable — violence is currency.
Their hope is that they survive long enough to one day grow out of it. The desire to belong is so real that any community, including gangs, will do.
The more law enforcement is used, the more of a challenge it becomes. It almost acts as encouragement because it is something else to beat.
Drugs are also a way of life. For some it’s about using, for others it’s selling. It’s simply a way to earn money. A visit to our social housing estates will reveal high levels of organisation. Like any business, you have distribution points, a clear marketing strategy and, most of all, plans to deal with the opposition.
I also see the age of involvement getting younger and they don’t care if they live or die. In that sense they are like suicide bombers.
Recently I was involved in the rehabilitation of two nine-year-old boys. One was tasked with moving weapons from location to location and the other given addresses for drug drops. He would deliver the packages during school lunch breaks in exchange for McDonald’s, KFC and clothes.
Children like these do not grow up seeing themselves as having a future in business or leadership. They are crying out for genuine role models. When our young men find more employment opportunities from businessmen than “road men”, real change will begin.
Who is pioneering youth worker Ray Lewis
- RAY LEWIS has been transforming children’s lives since 2002. The prison service boss-turned-youth worker was inspired by a visit to Mississippi, where he saw hard-core gang members transformed through a combination of military drills, tough love and lessons in black history.
- BACK home, he began replicating the process – with impressive results. Each year at his Eastside Young Leaders’ Academy in Newham, East London, Ray works with more than 300 boys and girls aged eight to 16 who are at risk of social and educational exclusion.
- SINCE 2007 he has arranged more than 126 scholarships for his pupils at public schools – including Eton College, Rugby School, Sherborne Girls School and Wellington College. His former pupils have forged impressive careers in government, technology, business and the arts.
- IN weekly workshops and seminars, dad-of-three Ray, 55, hears from young people about their lives on the streets. He is in a unique position to understand the complex causes of surging street violence. Here, he tells SHARON HENDRY of his solutions for change.
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Until that time, we need to love these children back to sanity. They are simply not able to make the rational choices our education and social systems demand.
We experience a ruling class committed to maintaining the status quo. Talk about social mobility is just air. Our children are left with the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.
The Government is afraid of the mob — but in some areas there is little less than anarchy breaking out.