A significant number of children in England and Wales do not trust the police, according to a report published by the parliamentary group for children on Tuesday. To the extent that it signals cross-parliamentary recognition of a problem young people have voiced for years, this report is significant. Distrust of the police stems from a number of causes. This latest report highlights poor communication between the police and young people, the misuse of stop-and-search powers, and an attitude that young people are “mini-adults” and not children in need of support.
All too often the police are viewed as enforcers first and foremost rather than a source of protection. Last year a group of boys told me that they once took a taxi home and, while they were in the cab, he changed the fare they had already agreed. When they refused to pay, he stopped the taxi in the middle of nowhere and told them to get out. When they refused to leave the car the driver called the police and the boys were arrested. When I questioned why they didn’t call the police themselves when the driver changed the fare their response was brutally clear: “Even if we had done when the police arrived they would have taken the driver’s word over ours.” Their account lingered with me for some time after – what must it feel like to be a young person and believe that, should you every find yourself in a situation where you need help, you can’t go to the police for assistance?
As problematic as this is, the issues run far deeper than the relationship between police forces and young people. Stop and search, for example, is also influenced by public perceptions of youth culture, racism, and a range of other stereotypes that some young people navigate every day. These assumptions have an effect on the relationship between the police and young people – who are victims of crime as well as those suspected of committing offences.
A current study by the University of Bedfordshire has found similar shortfalls in young people’s experiences of the criminal justice response to sexual exploitation. Participants have described weighing up the risks associated with reporting exploitation to the police as they perceive, and have sometimes experienced, that a criminal justice intervention can leave them even more unsafe.
Yet these are not solely limitations of the police, or even the criminal justice system more broadly. Over the past 10 years the police service is just one of many statutory agencies that I have heard described as untrustworthy. Whether I’ve been interviewing young people about their experiences of weapon use, access to public transport, or school exclusions, all too often their accounts are tinged with disbelief that any professional can actually keep them safe, particularly those with whom they have one-off or inconsistent contact.
In truth, it can take years to gain the trust of individual young people. I have witnessed professionals in the voluntary sector, youth workers, teachers and sexual health services sticking with individual young people for months, often years, and over time gaining their confidence. On some occasions I have also witnessed this approach among individual dedicated police officers.
Ultimately we need to ask ourselves whether we would trust an individual with our safety who we had never met despite the odd occasion where they thought that one of us, or our mates, had done something wrong? Such is the system that we currently operate in, reacting to crises by dipping in and out young people’s lives in the place of consistent relationship building, that distrust is a somewhat predictable outcome.
If we are to take away anything from this most recent report it should be that you have to earn, rather than enforce, the trust of young people if you really want to keep them safe.
