Youth mentors to fight crime

ELECTION 2010

A youth mentoring project would be set up in Oldham under a Conservative government, the party has claimed.

David Cameron said a small part of the Home Office crime prevention budget would be used to provide ongoing core funding for the youth mentoring and engagement projects in each of the 100 most deprived wards in England and Wales.

Included on the 100-strong list was a part of Coldhurst.

The Tories say the project must be based on wards rather than entire council areas as they are the right size for local projects to be effective but stay rooted in the community.

The promise is part of Mr Cameron‚s pledge to mend “Broken Britain”.

Mr Cameron said crime and violence had been largely ignored by the other parties in the general election campaign.

Actress Brooke Kinsella backed the Tories to deal with the teen violence which cost her brother’s life as she was revealed as the head of a taskforce to find projects to fund in 100 deprived neighbourhoods.

Speaking about knife crime Mr Cameron said: “There’s a danger that we as a society can slowly become immune to events like this.

“Each time the shock is a little bit slighter, a little bit quicker to pass. And as our sensitivity gets coarsened, we get a step further away from what it is to be civilised.

“It is time to be honest about what has been happening in our country. There has always been violence. There has always been evil.

“But there is something about the frequency of these crimes ˆ the depravity of these crimes, that betrays a deep and fundamental problem in Britain today.”

The party said there would be more stops and searches, more mobile knife scanners, and anyone over the age of 16 caught in possession of a knife could expect to be prosecuted on the first offence.

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