Hackney

Early intervention projects:

• Critical Incident Management Scenario Training
• The YES building - Youth Empowerment Solutions for Hackney

Gang/gun prevention projects:

• African Hackney Youth F.C: Club development
• Be Safe - Weapons Awareness workshops for young people and adults
• Communities Respond
• TRUCE

About Hackney

The London Borough of Hackney is one of 12 inner-London boroughs, and faces a number of challenges including poverty and unemployment.

Hackney has an estimated population of 215,700, which is growing fast: Between 1991 and 2001 Hackney experienced a 12 per cent population increase whilst London's population as a whole increased by 7.4 per cent.

Nearly 56 per cent of the population in Hackney belongs to BME communities, and the number of languages spoken at home other than English is 80.

Young people and children under the age of 18 make up a quarter of the population in Hackney, and are over-represented in the borough both as perpetrators and victims of crime.

The unemployment rate in Hackney is very high at 6.9 per cent, and 50.8 per cent of residents live in socially rented accommodation compared with 19.2 per cent in England and Wales.

Hackney is a vibrant and lively borough, with a high degree of strength and determination within its diverse communities. The social and economic regeneration currently taking place is central to reducing crime and disorder.

Although the total number of crimes in the borough went down by 8 per cent between 2004 and 2005 (as opposed to the MPS average of 4 per cent), gun crime in the borough has increased from 207 incidents in 2004, to 244 incidents in 2005, a rise of 18 per cent. Homicide, on the other hand, went down from 11 to 3 incidents.

Some of the priorities outlined in Hackney's Crime and Disorder Reduction and Combating Drug Misuse Strategy 2005-8 are reducing youth crime, drug and alcohol misuse, anti-social behaviour, violent crime, and property crime. Download the 2005-8 strategy (PDF file).