I am interested in this stuff.
I have spent most of my life
working with beautiful humans
on the edge
in pain
in violence
in dysfunction
in deprivation
I did a study on Gangs and Deprivation in 1979
I strive to understand the lives of all of us
especially those in greatest need
creating difficulties
for themselves
for their communities
Beautiful Humans .........
This is an item of working with people that works.
Karyn McCluskey of the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU). Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian
The walls of Karyn McCluskey’s cluttered office, located in a 1970s office block in downtown Glasgow, are decorated with photographs. There is a picture from a stint at the Met in London – her long, sandy-coloured hair and knee-length boots stand out among a sea of men in uniforms – alongside stark, black-and-white photos of blood-soaked young Glaswegians in doctors’ surgeries.
“People ask me, ‘Why do you spend your time getting these bad boys jobs?’ I always say, ‘I’m not doing it for them, I’m doing it for their kids,’” McCluskey says.
McCluskey was a young intelligence officer on Strathclyde Police. Then commissioner Sir William Rae asked the recent recruit from West Mercia to pen a report on how to reduce the city’s headline grabbing rates of violence. McCluskey’s paper lead directly to the creation of the VRU. A decade later, she is the unit’s director.
A long-time single parent, McCluskey has no shortage of empathy for the young men – they are overwhelmingly men – whose names and faces come across her desk. She goes to the christenings of ex-offenders’ children; more than once, our long conversation is broken by a phone call from a charge seeking advice. But she is hard-headed, too, which perhaps explains why Theresa May is one of her many fans.
"If jail on its own worked, America would have no crime"
VRU director Karyn McCluskey
McCluskey believes inequality breeds violence. She wants “a revolution” in how we tackle violence – by focusing on the traumatic environments in which so many offenders are reared. Reversing the effects of 20 years of deprivation and neglect is not easy, but it has to be done.
Women can be great people workers in my experience.
Working with men or/and women.
These recent acts of lust and often worse - violence and even murder = terrible BUT learning can change humans.
As a Youth Worker I have seen it happening - humans of a violent past - parental past too - can be reversed.
Learning to love and not grope - to value not hurt abuse damage a life - a family - a community - a nation and not setting one against the other BUT
respecting deeply humans of a different gender.
BHP
