Unpacked: Young People & Violence

This series has challenged narratives around race, young people and violence, asking us to put the welfare of children and young people at the centre, and question how we can truly protect them.

In the final episode, Richie Brave sits down with Runnymede Trust CEO Dr Shabna Begum, and Temi Mwale, founder of 4FRONT and architect of Harm to Healing (temimwale.com) to ask what safety actually looks like, and how we can get there.

Links

Temi Mwale & Dr Patrick Williams, 2023 ‘Harm to Healing: Resisting Racial Injustice in the Criminal Legal System of England and Wales’ (harmtohealing.org/resources/report)

HEART OF THE HOOD - a raw, powerful collection of truth-telling, memory and imagination from the 4FRONT community (www.bit.ly/heart-hood)

Harm to Healing Blueprint: A framework for building systems of healing, safety and justice beyond racialised criminalisation (www.harmtohealing.org/resources/blueprint)

The statements made by guests on this podcast do not necessarily represent the views of the Runnymede Trust.

Content warning: this episode contains references to attempted suicide.

Until now the series has been shaped by the male experience - male fear, male stereotypes and male harm. This episode centres women and girls. Not just as victims, but as people navigating risk, silence, expectation and survival every day. With youth practitioner Ebinehita Iyere, barrister Ife Thomspon, poet and campaigner Lady Unchained, and podcaster and writer Marvyn Harrison, we explore the scale of violence against women and girls in the UK, how early it starts, and why it's often minimised, normalised or ignored.

Guests

Ebinehita Iyere - youth practitioner and founder of Milk Honey Bees (milkhoneybees.co.uk)

Ife Thompson - barrister (nexuschambers.com/barristers/ife-thompson) and founder of BLAM UK (Black Learning Achievement and Mental Health, blamuk.org)

Lady Unchained - poet, award winning broadcaster and campaigner on criminal justice reform (unchained.org.uk)

Marvyn Harrison - founder of Dope Black Dads and BLOVED (podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-marvyn-harrison-podcast/id1456522027)

The statements made by guests on this podcast do not necessarily represent the views of the Runnymede Trust.

In this episode, we challenge how policing is justified as safeguarding. Joined by the Runnymede Trust’s own Sophia Purdy-Moore, Sayce Holmes-Lewis, founder and CEO of Mentivity, and JMF, a content creator connected to Mentivity, Richie Brave asks whether current policing approaches truly protect young people, or sometimes cause harm in the name of safety.

Links:

The Runnymede Trust, Keeping Us Safe: Rethinking Policing, Harm and Justice, London: The Runnymede Trust, 2024

Adam Elliott-Cooper, Black Resistance to British Policing, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021

Baroness Louise Casey, The Baroness Casey Review: An Independent Review into the Standards of Behaviour and Internal Culture of the Metropolitan Police Service, London: Crown Copyright, 2023

Dr Laura Connelly, Roxy Legane, and Dr Remi Joseph-Salisbury, Decriminalise the Classroom: A Community Response to Police in Greater Manchester’s Schools, Manchester: Kids of Colour and Northern Police Monitoring Project, August 2020

The statements made by guests on this podcast do not necessarily represent the views of the Runnymede Trust.

Violence isn’t the starting point. This episode explores everything that happens before violence appears. Joined by Jay Yambuya, co-founder of No More Exclusions, and Jenni Steele from Juvenis, Richie Brave looks at the factors before the spark that often don’t make the headlines.

Links:

The Runnymede Trust, History on Loop: Black and Asian British Children Are Locked Out of the Classroom, London: The Runnymede Trust, 2021.

The statements made by guests on this podcast do not necessarily represent the views of the Runnymede Trust.

There is a myth that youth violence has a face: Black and male.

This shapes who gets stopped by police, who gets excluded from school, and who is automatically labelled as dangerous.

In this episode, Richie Brave sits down with rapper KOJ and researcher and lecturer Dr Becky Clarke to understand how that image is conjured through history, policy and the media.

By stripping violence of stereotypes, we stop asking “what’s wrong with young people?” and instead consider their lived reality.

Links

The Justice Project: Sites of Resistance, Manchester Metropolitan University

Becky Clarke and Patrick Williams, ‘Dangerous associations: Joint enterprise, gangs and racism’, London: Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, January 2016

Episode credits

‘Ami’s Story’ (voiced by an actor) from The Audio Content Fund’s series 'Equal Britain?'

The statements made by guests on this podcast do not necessarily represent the views of the Runnymede Trust.

Living with violence is the reality for many young people, but who is the victim, and who is the perpetrator?

Presented by Richie Brave and brought to you by the Runnymede Trust, this series encourages us to flip the narrative to question who gets forgotten, and how we can really keep young people safe.

The statements made by guests on this podcast do not necessarily represent the views of the Runnymede Trust.