Mums and Dads living in the cold, bleak, but blissful city of London, are forever anxious about the safety and future of their teenage children who may fall victim to a life of crime and end up in jail, or worse case scenario, dead. Lets face it, every now and again, a teenager is murdered and we see a grieving mother on the news, only to forget about it the next day or two, and then mourn over another teenager's death sometimes the next day, sometimes the following week or even a month later.
Last year alone, the Office For National Statistics revealed a staggering statistic of a 27% rise in violent crimes - most of these amounted to gun and knife crime committed by young people against young people. This year alone, so far, we have had a series of knife and gun attacks involving young people which has left some severely injured and some dead as a result of petty crime,over gang wars and drug-related arguments.
However, it isn't all doom and gloom. I spoke to Gwenton Soley, a 33 year old renewed man who has left the gangster lifestyle after being released from prison almost ten years ago, and has been working with the government, the Metropolitan police and other local agencies to deter young people from a life of criminality. He gives me hope that with his intervention and through the wisdom he passes on to the younger generation, we will witness a fall in youth-related knife and gun crime, or better yet, an eradication.
Soley's eloquence and warm vibe really made me wonder why such a calm and intelligent man would ever have got involved in crime, but I was soon to find out. We sat in Starbucks in Brixton, while he started off vividly telling me about the humble beginnings he came from and how this deprivation soon led to the quality of life he led. He was born in Jamaica and grew up there till the age of six, till he came down to England with his mother and sister. He ended up living with his dad, step-mum and stepbrother. "It was hard, it was no different to being in care, than living in a house, other than my dad was in the house. Although we didn't have much back home, when I say much, I mean, no gas, no electric, no water. First time I saw a TV I was eight years old," he told me with an air of gratitude in his voice despite the financial difficulties he had faced in his former years.
He attended Princess May primary school in Hackney when he was younger and started his education in Year 4 when he joined the establishment. However, Soley was very advanced for his age even then and ended up working with the Year 6 students and doing work that was apparently two years advanced for his age. Though he was proving to be an academic gem, Soley made the point that he was rebellious during school in that he immediately started gravitating towards the naughty students in class. He explained to me, "From the age of eight, the teacher started writing things about me, and I stopped learning in school. As a result of that, I was accepted into none of the good secondary schools." With a slight smile on his face, he recalled a schoolboy memory and narrated, "At Year 9, we were driving mopeds to school, robbing people's handbags, robbing people's phones, it was already what it was."
Getting caught up with the delinquents in his area, Soley got involved in a life of criminality from a young age, which started off with him selling stolen 'free lunch' tickets at school to more serious crimes. At the age of 19, Soley was given a six year sentence from 2002-2005 for the charge of armed robbery with intent. "For anyone that thinks prison changes people, I'd just like to say it doesn't, all prison does is preserve life. It will just give you more time to act like you're a young boy on the streets," he told me quite bluntly. He went on to tell me that in between the period of his three year sentence, he got kicked out of various prisons and was placed in up to ten different prisons. Though he proved a nuisance whilst within the prison system, Soley used his initiative to rack up as many certificates to reflect his pro-active approach in completing a range of vocational courses. He told me, "By the time I came out in 2005, the probation officer was surprised, not only that I'd been able to achieve so much in prison, but I was able to travel to so much prisons in three years."
I guess the difference between ex-prisoners and Soley is his sheer determination and perseverance in wanting to lead a changed and better life for the greater good. What I commend him for more though is his willingness to help and support young people who have similar experiences to his past lifestyle and his consistency in aiming to put a stop to the vicious cycle of gangs and criminality a lot of young people fall victim to.
Soley explained to me that in order for youth-related gang,gun and knife crime to be tackled, we should focus on the addiction, rather than the crime itself as a society. He reasoned with me saying, "When we think of crime, we need to understand its driven by addiction, its not about the crime. I'll give you an example, recently we had a 74 year old man squeeze himself into a hole to get into Hatton Gardens, to rob diamonds, that is not about the money. Because these people have got the houses, they've got the businesses, they're retired criminals, they're not jokers. To make someone come out of their house when they've got less summers in-front of them than behind them, its their addiction."
He was approached in 2006 by Scotland Yard to assist them in setting up a gang exit programme in Southwark. Since then, Soley has been re-called to help with a project in Lewisham called Triology Plus, which is still up and running till today. Safe and Secure was a programme which used to be run by Scotland Yard and has now been renamed as the London Gang programme, again through Soley's expertise and guidance. He told me that the model was invented with the objective to give a prisoners' a second chance in life by offering them support with housing, in addition to therapy needed for one to transition further in life. Soley claimed that the model doesn't live up to what it says on the tin, and for this reason has failed. "They lied to me and told me that they had a sign up from G15 housing to support .. which is the largest housing association, which would then provide the properties. But that didn't happen,so what we have is a lot of young people being forced out of education to pay their rent, they're in private accommodation, a lot of them are having to give up their jobs." It came across that Soley was hugely passionate in housing ex-offenders and supplying them with the appropriate support to move on with their lives.
With his hard work not being dismissed, even the Home Office contacted him to collate a few reports through utilising his experiences and his research. As a result, he started getting paid by them on a consultancy basis and claims most 90% of the reports we see produced by the Home Office were because of his handiwork, however not all of them include his name as far as credentials are concerned.
Soley went on to add some humour to our conversation, "Lets be honest about it - I could work for government, but I can't get a job in Tescos." This remark strikes me as being both ironic but hugely significant in illustrating the difficulties prisoners and ex-prisoners may face in being accepted by wider society.
Since being out of prison, Soley has worked extensively with young people in schools, alongside teachers and parents to solve issues relating to an individual's educational success and life opportunities. He very often gets calls from the heads of schools for him to try and intermediate between student and parents or student and teachers in cases of delinquent and deviant behaviour. He told me about one of the most recent cases. "I was sent a text to say that a young man had brought a firearm to school, because the headteacher had said something to him that he didn't like. But everyone was looking at it like it wasn't a real gun, but what if it was a real gun and what support has this young man been getting since then," he said.
"I made sure I referred him to a service where he could get one ongoing one-to-one support. Because a lot of the time young people need someone to offload to. And its about the language we use. If you tell a young person, 'Yeah go see a counsellor, depending on their age, they're not gonna go. If you say to a young person, 'you know what, I have to offload sometimes, I think you need to', the young person will be more than willing to go and seek the support. So its about having someone to walk with them," he asserted.
Soley went on to make the valid point that we need to analyse the mindsets of these students/young people and were they are drawing their influences from. He said we should shy away from blaming violent urban films for the rise in violence in young people, but start looking at soaps that one may sit down and watch with the family, without anyone being sceptical about its content or batting an eyelid. "Depending on what time of the year it is, we have EastEnders, Coronation Street, in competition to see who's got the best murders or who can get the most murders at the same time. But families will allow the young people to sit there and watch these shows and think its acceptable, " he explained.
Quite often the media will demonize subcultures and a certain genre of music which we may associate with criminal behaviour and danger. However, this is detrimental in itself, in that cultures and any sort of content which is not being used to create moral panic about is not vetted, and these things could be the very thing that are impacting young people and leading them to be violent - whether its EastEnders or an article about ISIS in the newspaper, so Soley does have an interesting point.
A multi-faceted, entrepreneurial visionary, is currently working on a film with someone people from Nottingham, who produced the online film 'The Chase' which can be viewed below:
To keep up to date with more of what Gwenton Soley is doing, to receive some mentoring, or ask some advice please follow him on Twitter and get in touch : +Gwenton Sloley