Two weeks ago I was able to speak directly to the Prime Minister in Downing Street.

Directly, but remotely! The PM had invited PCCs from across the country for a discussion around the government’s Beating Crime Plan. I stayed in South Yorkshire but was able to join by video link. Now that we know we can hear and see really well by these remote links, I find it harder and harder to justify at taxpayers’ expense long (and expensive) journeys for meetings that may last – as this one did – less than an hour. (Though it would have been interesting to see inside No 10!)

Amongst the various topics discussed, the PM made a point that I have previously made in these blogs – that levelling up cannot just be about economic levelling. Or, putting it another way, economic levelling up will also depend on other kinds of activity including getting crime and anti-social behaviour down. It’s a simple but obvious point. If you can locate your business anywhere in the country, why would you choose to go where serious crime was a factor? And if you are a young person on the threshold of adulthood, you will not do much for your future prospects if you get caught up in criminality – and that will be a real danger for some living in areas where gangs are operating.

So one of the points I made to the Prime Minister was that if we are to steer certain of our young people away from the organised gangs, as well as the economic levelling up – the provision of jobs  and opportunities –  we also need to see restored the youth services that once existed but were casualties of the years of austerity.

Youth clubs, youth centres and youth workers are not directly a police matter. I try to give funding whenever I can to projects that help to keep young people occupied in the evenings and in the long summer holidays; but the people needed to run them have to exist for me to do that. And what I can’t do is fund a proper youth service. That is the responsibility of the local authorities; but their grants have been more savagely cut than any other part of the public sector.

If we want young people to come under the influence of adults who will be good role models for them and help them make sensible choices in their lives, we need those youth workers again who were once so active in youth centres and in communities. Not every young person is fortunate enough to have family members who will play that role. As long as those youth leaders are missing, the gangs stand waiting to take their place.

The Prime Minister listened; but I don’t think he was persuaded.

Representation

While female representation in the force is heading in the right direction, the attempt to increase the proportion of minority ethnic officers is not yet showing positive results. This is disappointing and given the increase in recruitment over the next year or two, it will be an opportunity missed if not addressed.

There will be an attempt to reach minority ethnic groups in the next round of advertising and this is also one of the areas I have asked the Independent Ethics Panel to look at. Among other things I want us to see whether anything can be learnt from other force areas where there has been progress.

I spoke to an Asian youth leader in Lowfields, Sheffield, last week, asking her directly whether there were issues for young people in her community with the police that would inhibit them applying. She thought not, but did say that informal contact between young people and officers was important if not crucial. Older teenagers in particular – 16-19 year olds – need to meet neighbourhood officers on a regular basis, in schools and colleges, in community groups, around the streets. In her view, young people are drawn towards those careers where they meet enthusiastic practitioners, and that exposure and commitment was at least as important as meeting officers of the same ethnicity.

Worth noting.

Lived experience is not enough

I was stopped in the street by someone who was very aggrieved because an organisation he had started had been turned down for a grant. This had been quite sometime ago, but it still rankled. He wanted funding to go into schools and run programmes about knife crime and its dangers.

When I said there were already such programmes he said that his was different because he would be bringing ‘lived experience’. By this he meant that he had once carried a knife, had been involved in fights, had been badly cut and spent time in prison. But now he had turned his life around and wanted to ‘give something back’.

From time to time we have applications for funding where a principal selling point of a project is that those running it have ‘lived experience’. What are we to make of that?

In some instances it can certainly add something of value. When I first became PCC in the wake of the child sexual exploitation scandals in Rotherham, I set up a panel of victims and survivors so that we could learn directly from these young women how grooming worked and why the various authorities had failed to help them. This was using their ‘lived experience’.

But it does not follow that someone with lived experience, say of serious violence, by virtue of that experience alone, knows what needs to be done to prevent others being drawn into it. Sometimes, what the person with lived experience proposes is not helpful at all.

The man who stopped me wanted to show young people some of the blades he used to carry when he was a teenager and talk about how, on one occasion, his own knife had been seized by another gang member and used against him. He was convinced this would be enough to cause young people not to carry knives themselves.

Yet all the evidence I have seen suggests otherwise. Some young people may be frightened into thinking that others are routinely carrying knives when they are not. Others may decide they need to arm themselves if that is what is happening. There is little evidence that these attempts to scare young people into behaving in a particular way, actually work.

Lived experience has its place. It helps our understanding of what it feels like to be a victim or an offender. But being a victim or an offender does not in and of itself give insights into what does or does not work. For that we need other kinds of evidence. Lived experience does not trump everything.

Stay safe and well.