LIVERPOOL - Wed 7 May 2008

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WITNESSES

1. & 2. Alison Stathers-Tracey & Stuart Smith

Truancy is a good indicator that there is some dysfunction somewhere within a family.

Alison Stathers-Tracey is Assistant Executive Director for Community Safety, Liverpool City Council plus Chair of Liverpool gun & gang crime strategy for the Citysafe partnership. Stuart Smith is Director of Children's Services, Liverpool City Council.

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3. & 4. Chief Constable Bernard Hogan-Howe & Simon Byrne

Our groups tend to be groups of white youngsters, that’s not to say there is no black person involved in gun crime, because we have had that, but if you were to say what’s the theme, it has tended to be where we found most difficulty with young people tends to be white young gangs rather than black gangs.

Bernard Hogan-Howe & Simon Byrne are Chief constable and assistant chief constable respectively of Merseyside police.

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5. Andrew Edwards

We actually don’t necessarily believe that just bad news sells newspapers. Relentless bad news puts people off. You can take a different approach to bad news and try and take positives out of it.

Andrew Edwards is assistant editor of the Liverpool Echo, which runs the 'Liverpool Unites' anti-gun crime campaign.

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6. & 7. Cathy Elliot & Dave Murray

I don't categorise the young people I work with. For me everyone’s exactly the same. Everyone’s got two hands and two legs and I don’t see any different whatsoever.

Cathy Elliot is assistant Chief Executive of the Community Foundation for Merseyside, who fund the Merseyside Young Transformers programme to provide diversionary activities for at-risk young people. Dave Murray is the founder of the Glaciere Project which offers sailing, diving and first-aid courses for youths from criminal backgrounds.

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8. Darren Hulse

Young people that I'm working with constantly they think it’s the norm to carry guns under their beds and hold 'em for other people, because of the money that they can make from that.

Darren Hulse is Outreach & Development Worker for Fairbridge, an organisation which works with referred young people, often those who've been involved in violence, to provide them with skills and self-development.

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9. Sue Younger

The main problem that we find with these young people is the actual fear of going to court and the actual fear of being a witness.

Sue Younger is director of the Young Witness Service at Victim Support Nottinghamshire.

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10. Bob Croxton

There's been guns in the UK for god knows how long. But what's actually happened is that someone has realised that they can make money from it now.

Bob Croxton is a former long-term serious professional criminal, who now runs an outreach programme educating young offenders in the realities of conviction, prison and gun/knife use.

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