Ex-gang member builds himself a new life

A former London gang member who narrowly escaped death three times in a year is one of the finalists for an award from Prince Charles.

Warren Christian was in a gang for nine years and was shot at aged 13 when caught in a rival area outside his borough.

He decided to turn his life around when his cousin was jailed in 2002 for armed robbery.

After starting a construction training course and becoming his firm's youngest on-site manager, he is one of the four finalists for this year's Young Achiever of the Year award.

Mr Christian said he used always to carry a knife or gun: “Most of the time you didn't know what weapon the other individual would have. I got so used to it, for years and years I didn't know I was doing anything wrong.”

But after four years at a building firm, Mr Christian said: “I hope to turn my friends around. They see me as that guy that if he makes it, they will too.”

The London Celebrate Success Awards have seven categories to recognise achievements of the 6,500 young people with whom the trust works across London.

Seventeen

Seventeen is an upcoming documentary that will feature every British teenager who falls victim to violent death during 2009.

Morgan Matthews, the award-winning film and TV director, is filming at the funerals of the young victims, mainly of knife crime, in the hope of showing the devastation of grief and stimulating debate and provoking remorse among the perpetrators.

Ruth Kelly, the producer of Seventeen for the independent producer Minnow Films, said they were aiming to make "the definitive documentary on youth violence".

Kelly added that although the production was fully funded by the BBC, as owners of the rights Minnow Films wanted to ensure that the film was seen as widely as possible — hopefully by every teenager in the land, "not just the converted".

Minnow Films is seeking backing from charities and other organisations working with teenagers to help ensure that the documentary is seen as widely as possible.

Seventeen's distributors will include the 11,000-strong FilmClub network, which supplies school film clubs with movies; a senior Home Office civil servant and a member of the steering group tackling knife crime, who said that shorter scenes would work well on social networking sites; and the NSPCC and Prince's Trust.

The Dangers of Sexting

A teenage boy sent out a text message asking girls to send photos of their breasts. Word got out at his high school, and when authorities tracked the teen down they discovered a cache of naked images on his phone.

Thus began another investigation into "sexting" — sending sexually explicit photos by cellphone — and another deliberation about when adolescent impulsiveness and indiscretion become a serious criminal act.

Some of the photos could qualify as child pornography, police said. "He thought it was a mischievous, fun game, without realizing he was asking these girls to commit a crime and he was committing a crime," said the police officer investigating the case.

The sexting phenomenon, which has alarmed parents and educators, is raising an array of practical questions about how police and prosecutors should respond and what the long-term fallout could be for children.

A survey has revealed that 20 per cent of teens — 22 per cent of girls and 18 per cent of boys — electronically send or post online nude or semi-nude photos or videos of themselves.

Teens often cannot see the long-term consequences of their behaviour: sexting may not only invite legal troubles but cause problems if obscene pictures leaked in cyberspace are recognized by other people.

Link: Webcam Danger — Who's Watching?

Facebook Gangsters

UK police have claimed that young people are being 'groomed' into gang culture through internet social networking sites. Police chief Ian McPherson said parents would be shocked if they knew the extent of the problem on websites such as Facebook and Bebo. He said there was increasing concerns over how gangs were targetting teenagers.

"Social networking sites are an important method of communication and recruitment for gang members," said Mr McPherson. "What is really worrying is that many young people are being inadvertently drawn into associating with gang members without knowing they are doing so."

Meanwhile, UK prison authorities have launched an inquiry after a self-proclaimed gang leader smuggled a camera phone into his cell and posted pictures of himself on Facebook. Joland Giwa, 20, who claims to be the leader of Croydon gang DSN ('Don't Say Nothing'), poses in his cell and boasts: "I'll be out in two weeks."

The UK's Ministry of Justice revealed that it had held talks with internet sites such as Facebook and the media watchdog Ofcom about controlling images on social networking sites. But a spokesman said: "This form of media is totally unregulated and we have no power to remove a social networking profile from the internet."

Link: God and the Gangs
Link: Internet Safety