Youths 'join gangs for role models'

7:31pm Friday 8th August 2008

A lack of adult role models is fuelling a rise in UK youngsters joining gangs, a charity said.

A survey commissioned by the Prince's Trust suggested nearly a third of young people did not have an adult role model to look up to.

The charity claimed that young people were "creating youth communities" to make up for the lack of adult influence in their lives.

The Culture of Youth Communities survey was carried out on behalf of the youth charity to find out why young people wanted to get involved in gangs.

Some 22% of the 1,754 young people questioned said they thought people joined gangs to find someone to look up to and 55% said they were more influenced by their peers than by their parents.

But the report found that just 9% of young people had joined gangs themselves and only 2% had ever carried a knife.

"Young people are creating their own youth communities and gangs in search of the influences that could once have been found in traditional communities," the trust's chief executive Martina Milburn said.

"All the threads that hold a community together - a common identity, role models, a sense of safety - were given by young people as a motivation to join gangs."

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