Crime Reduction - Helping to Reduce Crime in Your Area

The Princes Trust is a charitable organisation that aims to give support, encouragement and basic financial assistance to young people aged 14-30 in order to help them meet their goals. This reports examines that aims and aspirations of this group and what they perceive as being the barriers to meeting their goals. Comparisons are made with a control group of people not from a disadvantaged background.

Title: Breaking barriers? Reaching the hardest to reach
Authors: Andrew Calder and Rob Cope
Number of pages: 15
Date published: August 2003

The authors interviewed over 900 young people (14-25 years) from across Britain to ascertain their aim and ambitions for life, and what they perceive as being the barriers to them achieving these goals. Most of the interviewees were from disadvantaged backgrounds - disadvantaged for the purposes of the report being the unemployed, educationally underachievers, ex-offenders and serving prisoners, and those in or leaving care - although a small control group of those not from disadvantaged backgrounds was also interviewed to provide a comparison.

The aspirations of the disadvantaged group was largely similar to that of the control. They wanted to have a family, an interesting job, and enough money to support their lifestyle. Beyond this a nice house, good friends and to be in control of their own future were given as preferences. The younger end of the age range expressed ambitions relating to jobs and material achievements, whereas the older group were more interested in relationships and self-fulfilment. Whilst there was a great deal of similarity between the goals of the control and disadvantaged group, the disadvantaged group were unsure about how they would achieve them.

The disadvantaged group had very clear ideas about what was holding them back, as show from the table below