Intimidation and fear of violence driving pupils to join street gangs

Children are joining street gangs to protect themselves from bullying and violence in and around their schools, Lord Warner, chairman of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, told a headteachers' conference. He said levels of "intimidation and fear" were rising for many schoolchildren.

Many young people were joining gangs to ensure that they were not preyed upon themselves, Lord Warner told the Secondary Heads Association conference in Birmingham. "It's a case of if you can't beat them, join them."

A recent Mori poll for the Youth Justice Board found that 60 per cent of pupils were worried they would be physically intimidated either in or on the way to school, Lord Warner said. Half of secondary school pupils aged 11 to 16 had reported being victims of offences, the poll of 5,000 pupils aged 11 to 16 found. The majority of offences were committed by other young people. Almost a third of young people said they had been bullied, with the percentage rising for younger pupils.

Lord Warner said the poll, run for the board every year since 1999, showed that young people believed bullying and violence were becoming more common in schools.

The Youth Justice Board is a government agency that advises the Home Secretary on how to stop young people turning to crime. Lord Warner, who chaired the government inquiry into children's homes in 1992, said children who showed aggressive behaviour or were low achievers, truants or drug users and those who were friends with troublemakers were at greater risk of offending themselves.

Young people who were excluded from school were three times as likely to commit crimes as other children and their offences were also found to be much more serious, he said. However, some children's disaffection could be traced back to their fear of violence at school, Lord Warner said.

The Metropolitan Police had found that the peak hours and places for street crime were between 3pm and 5pm near the school gates and on local public transport routes, Lord Warner said. He welcomed the Government's Safer School partnerships, which base police officers in schools, arguing that a police presence would make pupils feel safer.

A study of young offenders with an average age of 17 found that half had the literacy and numeracy skills of an 11-year-old, while more than a quarter had numeracy skills that were worse than those of the typical seven-year-old.

"They were literally unemployable," Lord Warner said. "You could say that their decision to turn to crime was an economically justified decision given their unemployability."