Violence Doesn’t Start with a Knife. It Starts with Hundreds of Missed Moments.

A recent BBC article has referenced research showing that an ‘increasing proportion of children aged between 10 and 14 years old are suspected of committing violent crime in London’. 

To understand this, we need to look beyond the data and consider the real-life stories that show why young people are becoming involved in violence. They aren’t feeling seen; heard or listened to in their communities and schools. And this pushes young people to look for belonging elsewhere. In gangs. Online. Where they can find that missing sense of community and belonging.  

And before this, comes hundreds of missed moments to engage these young people. 

In recent weeks, we’ve seen powerful evidence that interventions involving youth workers and trusted adult’s work. A report on London’s custody-based youth workers revealed that up to 90% of young people arrested for violent offences did not reoffend after receiving help in teachable moments, where a young person is scared, reflective, and open to change. 

These moments matter. But they often arrive too late. 

What if we could reach young people before the arrest, the hospital visit, the exclusion from school? 

Too many young people in London are growing up surrounded by poverty, instability, and a culture that rewards risk. For some, status doesn’t come from academic success or sport – it comes from being in the right crowd. That crowd might mean dealing drugs, skipping school, or carrying a weapon. Not out of malice, but out of survival. Out of the need to belong. 

This is the pattern we need to interrupt, not just in moments of crisis, but in everyday moments of decision. And there’s no better place to do that than in schools where young people spend thousands of hours a year. On courts, in corridors, in the hours after lessons end, those ordinary spaces become the setting for extraordinary change. 

Jordan’s story shows this perfectly. By Year 9, Jordan had been excluded twice. He says, looking back, “there wasn’t much in the way of good news for me.” Status came from fitting in with the wrong crowd. Violence wasn’t an anomaly in his environment – it was the usual. 

And yet Jordan’s path shifted. Not because someone swooped in to rescue him in one moment of trouble, but because someone stayed. His Greenhouse coach-mentor. 

Coach set expectations, withheld rewards until behaviour improved, taught him how to emotionally regulate and express himself on the court – and crucially, never withdrew belief. Sport became the hook – but the mentoring was the turning point- consistently delivered over a number of years. Greenhouse coach-mentors are contracted for at least three years, full-time, 8 hours, five days a week, in schools in areas of high deprivation. The support is always there, and this means coach-mentors catch young people at those vital teachable moments in school – before they are marked down for behaviour, suspended and/or excluded 

“I knew he had faith in me,” Jordan says. 

That sense of belief changed his trajectory. From bottom sets to top grades. From being written off to building a future. Today, Jordan works as a Director at a top finance firm. In year 9, it was inconceivable for him to ever get an A. But because of Greenhouse – the sport, his coach, and belief – his whole life path changed. 

Stories like his show us what’s possible when young people are caught early, when we focus on tackling the root causes of crime and preventing it from happening in the first place. Interventions that combine sports and mentoring are so powerful because they provide young people with a community and build that sense of belonging they are searching for. Providing them with a team not a gang.   

We’ve seen what works at the point of crisis. Now we need to invest in earlier, deeper interventions – before a young person ends up in the youth justice system.  

Violence isn’t an isolated act – it’s the outcome of everything we failed to catch beforehand. So, we need to show up differently – not with one-off interventions – but presence, patience and persistence. 

And most importantly, connecting young people with that one person that believes in them and is there consistently for all the big and small moments. A trusted adult that builds their sense of belonging to their schools; communities and society.  

When young people become involved in violence so much is lost – the lives and futures of both victims and perpetrators. But there is something we can do – show up for the thousands of young people that are constantly being let down and struggling to find their place in society. We cannot wait.