A report that calls for some police powers to be curbed, and resources redirected “back to communities so our young people can thrive” was released by Liberty, a human rights advocacy group, on Tuesday. The report was a collaboration between similar community-based organisations, including Kids of Colour and Art Against Knives. Both organisations create spaces for young people to discuss and explore their racial experiences and identities.

The report, ‘Holding Our Own,’ provides a guide to non-policing solutions to serious youth violence. It criticises what Liberty has described as the failure of government to “solve society’s ills through ever-expanding police powers and criminalisation.”

In calling for reform, the report highlights the disproportionate use of stop-and-search powers on young Black men and boys. It also condemns the use of strip searches, which it describes as the “most traumatic and invasive extension of police powers.” According to Liberty, over-policing has led to “thousands of children [that are] strip searched every year.” Highlighting the killing of Stephen Lawrence and Jean Charles de Menezes in particular, the report argues that a “true reckoning with racism in policing is long overdue..

Whilst recommending an end to school exclusions, police in schools, pre-crime policing, drugs policing and cuts to youth services, the report also proposes more community-driven projects. These include the development of an “emancipatory education system based on care and support” and “community-based solutions to harm that allow young people’s friendships, communities and cultures to flourish.” Providing trauma informed safe spaces and healing-centred support for the youth are also amongst the recommendations made in the report.

Defenders of the report argue that such alternatives offer a more humane approach to complicated issue of crime amongst youth. Gracie Bradley, co-author and former Director of Liberty said, “We need imaginative and compassionate responses to social harms and their causes.”