We have recently been working with force colleagues to provide specialist intervention support to a young person on the peripheral of criminal activity.
Sharing our recent collaboration with the Biggleswade community policing team, PC Chris said:
"While we often share how we enforce on illegal activity and anti-social behaviour, it’s not the only approach we take to tackling crime in our local area.
"Recently, we have been working with our partners from the VERU and adopting their ‘child first, offender second’ ethos.
"What does this mean? It means that when we were made aware of a young person involved in anti-social behaviour, we paid them a visit (in plain clothes) to better understand how we can prevent things from escalating. After this visit, we learnt that the young person was actually being exploited by an older group, and didn’t know how to break away from them.
"Aware of the amazing work the VERU do to help young people turn their lives around, we referred the young person to their unique service, in the hope that they too would make better choices and move away from a life of crime.
"We know that sadly we won’t see the same positive outcome for every young person we try to work with.
"But for those that we can help in a different way, we will!"
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