Somewhere to Belong

At the start of this series seventeen-year-old Divine told Jacob Dunne that he had been shown the film about the night Jacob killed a man with a single punch and had one thought: I don’t care. Jacob joins the teenager in Manchester to find out , if not that, what did work to turn him away from violence.

For Divine, who had a history of getting into fights, it was not the VR headset or the trip to a weights gym that worked - but an intervention provider from a charity that works with Greater Manchester’s Violence Reduction Unit. The support worker was someone that Divine liked and respected, who clearly wasn't just there for the paycheck. He introduced Divine to Middleton Martial Arts Academy and although reluctant at first, two years later Divine is the adult British Muay Thai boxing heavyweight champion at 17, recently won gold at the world championships in Thailand and is studying business at college.

Two hundred miles south in Bethnal Green, KC came out of police custody into a scheme called Divert, funded by London's Violence Reduction Unit, who referred him to a small charity called Oak London, which led to him putting on an apron and doing a shift washing dishes at the back of a community café — he's now been offered a course working towards a paid barista job.

We also hear from two people who have spent their working lives on youth violence reduction: Akemia Minott, thirty years a youth worker in Moss Side, on what it means for a young person to see that somebody who does not have to cares about them; and Lib Peck of the London Violence Reduction Unit, on the limits of trying to arrest your way out of violence.

Presenter: Jacob Dunne
Producer: Victoria Ferran
Executive producer: Susan Marling
Sound engineer: Mike Woolley

A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4