News

Two murders committed by groups of young people in London within a 2 day period

Monday 29th March 2010

Leap Confronting Conflict is saddened to learn of two murders committed by groups of young people in London within a 2 day period, since Thursday 25 March

Sofyen Belamouadden from Acton was killed in an attack last Thursday in Victoria station. Godwin “Nii” Lawson was attacked in Hackney on Saturday and two other victims of the same incident are in hospital.
Leap’s experience, gained over 20 years, is that young people can learn how to manage their anger and aggression and to channel their emotions constructively, without resorting to using knives or aggressive behaviour. Leap champions peer-mediation and peer led conflict resolution as a successful means to tackle youth violence in the UK.
Working with schools, community groups, youth groups and urban estates, Leap provides training to equip young people to become peer leaders and peacemakers, often in extremely challenging environments, to prevent youth violence in our schools and communities. Our Tackling Knives programme has been successful in addressing knife related crime, particularly in the London Borough of Westminster. In Enfield, police credit our work with leading to a reduction of 50% in Asbos across the borough.
In Glasgow, Leap is a key partner of the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV) project set up to address gang violence issues and we have trained over 60 practitioners from various agencies both statutory and voluntary who are part of the strategy including Strathclyde police, health agencies, social services, education, community safety, housing and local voluntary groups. Strathclyde Police report that there has been an impressive 49% decrease in violence within the group of 368 young people who have committed to the scheme. These early results are indeed encouraging, but we recognise that it is only through prolonged intervention, enforcement and one-to-one support that we can hope to leave a lasting legacy of real reduction in areas of gang violence in Glasgow and elsewhere.
Leap believes that young people are the future. There is a great deal of work still to do if we are to tackle these issues. Our thoughts are with the families of the Sofyen Belamouadden and Godwin Lawson at this time.