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Council news
Integrated Gangs Unit update name to Community Gangs Team
1st December 2023
Hackney Council’s gangs unit changed its name today (1 December) to better reflect its role in the community.Hackney’s Integrated Gangs Unit (IGU) has now become the Community Gangs Team – 13 years after its creation, and after helping over 2,000 people at risk of becoming involved in gang violence.Established in 2010, the IGU was created to support people involved in gang violence through methods of prevention, diversion and enforcement. Today – although the work of the team remains the same – the Community Gangs Team has developed its approach to become more proactive and less reactive. The Community Gangs Team tackles gang violence as a public health issue. This means it seeks to address the social, educational, mental health and employment factors that can lead to violent crime, and is done by working in partnership with the police, probation officers, the Council's youth services team, and voluntary agencies.This more holistic approach is working: Hackney has seen gang-related violent crimes decrease from 129 in 2017 to 31 in 2022.Examples of how the Community Gangs Team have taken a more community-focused stance include:Expanding its community outreach team to focus on mentoring and help finding work, employment and training opportunities;Working on ‘clean up’ projects, in collaboration with community organisations, in targeted areas to improve the surroundings (for example removing abandoned cars and painting over graffiti);Working with third sector organisation Mentivation to help educate young people in schools on how they can be responsible members of the community;Offering extra police patrols for community reassurance;Holding events with local employers. The name change follows a community consultation, involving 2,000 residents, which concluded the words ‘Gangs Unit’ made the team sound like it was a police unit, not a multidisciplinary team. This reportedly resulted in some barriers within the community for people who were wary of the police.For more information, visit: https://hackney.gov.uk/preventing-gang-crime
New campaign aims to help end harassment and misogyny on nights out in Shoreditch
30th November 2023
Hackney Council, Tower Hamlets Council, and the City of London Corporation, have joined forces on a trailblazing campaign against harassment and misogyny on nights out.The #DontCrossTheLine campaign has been created in response to reports from local residents and venues that there has been a rise in misogynistic behaviours in the night-time economy since the Covid-19 pandemic. It uses stark, perpetrator targeted messaging that lists the types of behaviours - like touching, groping, staring, or grabbing - that are not tolerated in nighttime venues in Hackney, Tower Hamlets, and the City of London.The campaign was informed by insight work with over 200 young men in Hackney who said that they thought there wasn’t enough awareness about the types of behaviours that were illegal.Results of a survey by UN Women published in March 2021 found that 97 per cent of young women in the UK said they had been sexually harassed, while 80 per cent reported experiencing sexual harassment in public spaces.ONS research also shows that nearly 800,000 women aged 16 and over had experienced sexual assault in the year ending March 2022, with Internet Matters research demonstrating the impact of misogynistic online content targeted at boys and young men. Building on the success of the launch, the partnership campaign will target visitors to Shoreditch’s nightlife by calling out unwanted behaviours and highlighting that harassment is a crime.The launch comes during the UN’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence and ahead of a busy festive period, as part of the three authorities’ strategies to tackle abuse and anti-social behaviour. The project is supported by the Met Police, who have been working closely with the boroughs to organise additional enforcement activities, including pop-up welfare events, safety briefings for bars and clubs, and CCTV radio networks. The City of London Police also supports the campaign and protecting women and girls from violence is at the heart of its Christmas operation. The operation covers the whole of the City which neighbours Shoreditch and includes a number of safety initiatives, aimed at keeping women safe such as, training bar staff on the dangers of drinking spiking and increased police patrols.To find out more about the campaign, visit: https://dontcrosstheline.uk/