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Tackling Scotland's gang culture
14/04/2008
More than 500 young people from Drumchapel to Dingwall who are involved in gangs will be targeted by projects to address issues such as anger management and territorialism to help them leave gangs and violence behind.
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill today visited Operation Reclaim in the Springburn area of Glasgow which will receive over £15,000 to do work intensively over a six month period with 120 known gang members.
Mr MacAskill announced a fund of £200,000 for police forces and local partners to bid from to tackle gang and youth disorder on February 14, 2008.
Kenny MacAskill said:
"It's great to see that so many of Scotland's police forces and their local partners have risen to the challenge and come up with great projects to help tackle youth and gang disorder.
"Many of these schemes imaginatively combine the tried and tested with new ideas and approaches. I think they can really get to the root of the issues involved in gang disorder and challenge them - by building team working skills to teaching ways to resolve conflict.
"By helping to build new skills and teach young people that there are alternatives to fighting, that banter is better than blades, we can turn lives around and show there's more to life than cheap drink and fighting.
"Some of the projects also focus on getting participants back into education or into a job - this shows that we can really make a difference to gang members and their communities. We need to allow them the chance to be all they can be."
30 bids were received by the closing date of March 7, although two were withdrawn shortly afterwards by the applicants. The remaining 29 bids were evaluated against set criteria by the Scottish Government and the Violence Reduction Unit and funding has been awarded to 19 applicants (nine were rejected). Successful projects will receive Government funding worth £163,000, backed up by services and investment worth more than £230,000 from those involved.
Some of the projects will extend the remit of existing initiatives whereas others are new or reignite previously delivered initiatives. Initiatives range from football based programmes, music and drama productions, residential activities courses, or classroom based activity. They also vary in scale - some are relatively short term with a small selected group - others will be delivered over a longer period with a higher number of individuals.
A list of the areas which will benefit from the funding is provided below.
Police Force Area Contribution
- Strathclyde Paisley and Renfrewshire £6,400
- Strathclyde Drumchapel £5,250
- Strathclyde Barrhead and Pollock £4,700
- Strathclyde Govan £5,470
- Strathclyde Woodlands £2,080
- Strathclyde Hamilton £29,150
- Strathclyde Sighthill and Springburn £15,510
- Strathclyde Easterhouse £16,269
- Fife Buckhaven £11,675
- Fife Glenrothes £5,100
- L&B Leith £10,736
- L&B West Lothian £4,336
- L&B Pentlands £2,500
- L&B Central Edinburgh £4,600
- L&B Roseburn £5,110
- Central Bannockburn £15,000
- Central Clackmannanshire £5,370
- Grampian Garthdee, Aberdeen £596
- Northern Pan Highland £13,727
This is designed to compliment the work undertaken during the enforcement phase of the Violence Reduction Unit's Collective Violence campaign. This has seen the police across Scotland stop and search over 6,000 potentially violent individuals and seized more than 500 weapons.