Prevention is key. That is the language that most of us are speaking—how do we stop recidivism? That goes right back to education. We now have mentors in violence prevention projects in 30 of the 32 local authorities, which look right across violence, including gender-based violence. The projects look at the core issues, from bullying to controlling behaviour and sexting—stuff that is relevant to young people and stuff that they are dealing with. Mentors in violence prevention is a peer-to-peer education programme and it has been evaluated very well, which is why it has spread across all local authority areas. It gives young people permission to challenge others through the bystander approach so that, if they see inappropriate behaviour, whatever that may look like, they are equipped and are sufficiently confident to challenge that behaviour. That project starts right at the bottom, with young people.
There are many other projects. Three of us spent a joyful summer at the Edinburgh military tattoo with 10 young people who have convictions. They were part of the support team at the Edinburgh military tattoo. We had the joy of sleeping in a barracks with them and spending 24 hours a day with them. Those 10 young men had never had structures in their lives and never had role models. They are almost forgotten people, who cannot get into the job market because of the level of their convictions. That is slow, hard work but, again, it is about starting small, seeing whether it can work and whether it can be evidenced and evaluated, and then seeing where it goes. We have had some people from that group go into full-time employment since then. That is not just about them; it is also about the ripple effect into their families and communities. They now smile and say, “I pay tax now. I’ve never seen anybody do that.” They were a drain, but now they are not.
We have another project that has been running for a couple of years, which is called Street & Arrow. It takes the same cohort of young men and women and gives them a year’s work on a training programme, which happens to be in catering. We teach them all the skills about how to be the adults they want to be—how to be the humans they want to and are meant to be. Again, it has had successful results, but it is intense. It takes funding from different agencies and we are in discussion about that with other members of the panel.
There are quite a number of different areas. We really believe in prevention. As I think most people would agree, we want the prison population to come down. We have quite a lot of different navigator programmes, including mentoring and lived experience programmes. Those are huge; they give authenticity and credibility.