Our detached team in Leeds have responded to local young people’s concerns about knife crime and the choices some of them are making to carry knives, by taking innovative ‘street safe’ workshops out onto the streets.
Over the last year, anti-social behaviour (ASB) and knife crime statistics have risen in Leeds, with 10 gun and knife-related incidents taking place in Leeds in the past month; the need to come up with new ways to tackle the issue of weapons and ASB on the city’s streets has never been greater.
To meet this need, our new project will look at what young people know and how they can help combat ASB and knife crime within their neighbourhood. In consultation with them in recent weeks, young people have spoken about how they feel a need to defend themselves from other young people from other areas of the city who they believe are carrying weapons.
Over the next few months we will help young people to find alternative ways to help themselves and their community to feel safer through our ‘street safe’ workshops which will focus on the positive and negative consequences of their choices and actions. The message is very much ‘choose life not a knife’.
Published by