Gangless in Glasgow: The City Famed for Youth Violence Is Keeping the Kids Clean

  • Photograph by David Gillanders for TIME

    Do as I didn't Former gang member William Palmer now helps the police and counsels Glasgow kids against violence

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    Going a step further, McCluskey and other Strathclyde officials figured crime prevention could practically start from birth. At the Jeely Piece (Scottish slang for jam sandwich) Club, a mother-child nursery in Castlemilk, near Glasgow, almost all the participants are single mothers. McCluskey and the VRU have focused on early-age programs as an investment in prevention, reasoning that if mothers can't keep their children in line, no one will. The kids and their mothers are taught to bond, to play, to enjoy each other. At the club's main center, a giant two-floor jungle gym dominates the atrium. "Most kids never had toys. They've never just played," says Grace Lamont, who works at the center. When neighborhood kids get to know one another at a very young age, they're less likely to be violent with one another later on.

    Up a nearby hill, the Castlemilk youth center caters to children ages 13 to 25. When the center first opened 17 years ago, only one group of kids — one gang, really — came to the facility, since it was in their territory. Increased funding has helped the center expand its reach. Through negotiations with the gangs for safe passage, six of them now use the center. There they can learn skills related to theater, computers, cooking, painting and making clothes. (The newest generation of gangs has included girls.) There's also a radio station and a recording studio. "It helps channel their energy into something positive," says Ryan Davison, who leads the center's Street Walking unit, which brings activities to kids who can't leave their areas. Dozens of charity groups working in partnership with the police offer kids everything from boot camps to trips to the ocean. For children too terrified to leave a 10-block radius, the countryside is practically a foreign country.

    Many of the programs designed to curb youth violence are not so touchy-feely. In addition to the fun day trips, community groups also take kids to youth detention centers and the morgue, where they witness families mourning the loss of their children. They talk to emergency-room doctors and former gang members like Palmer who underline the dangers of a life of violence.

    In the past, when kids committed minor crimes, the police called their parents, leaving it to them to impart discipline. Now when police see kids breaking the law — and a vast network of closed-circuit TV cameras makes it easier — they follow up by breaking down the offenders' front doors in early-morning raids and hauling them down to the station. In most cases, under-age offenders are just given a talking-to and are provided with information on local programs. But police hope the experience is enough of a wake-up call to scare them out of their bad behavior. And sometimes the arrests do lead to prison, electronic tagging or the loss of public housing for the offending child's family.

    Glasgow might have one other lesson to teach England: this kind of crime fighting isn't cheap. Its programs are paid for by the Scottish government, which recently doubled down by taking McCluskey's initiative across Scotland, adding another 1,000 cops to the streets and committing another $92 million to youth programs. In contrast, London's police force will likely be losing thousands of cops, and its new boss, Bernard Hogan-Howe, is confronted with widening gang and youth violence. He also faces the unpredictable impact of massive budget cuts that Cameron is imposing to try to ease Britain's debt crisis.

    But with the London Olympics 10 months away, Hogan-Howe can't afford not to tackle violence. After the riots, English police arrested thousands of participants, but critics say nothing has been done to deal with the underlying problem of gang culture. If Scotland Yard wants to reach William Palmer, the Glasgow police have his number.

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