Destined for youths are
HE is articulate, intelligent, and streetwise beyond his years.
At 13 he was smoking cannabis daily, and two years later was a drug dealer.
Expelled from his school in Salford, he was living with the pressure of having to find up to £400 a week for his supplier.
But 15-year-old Ryan, not his real name, has now taken another path, away from the one that was likely to end in jail and a wasted life.
He is one of 28 young men in the city – aged 12 to 17 – who are being helped to escape a route littered with violence, intimidation, and the empty promises of cash, cars, drugs, and kudos.
“I have seen people get stabbed up,” said Ryan. “I know that people I knew up until year ten at school have had to go away from Salford. They owe money and have been told ‘go out of the city until you can repay me.’
“They will go down south and do the same thing.”
A 17-year-old boy who is also being helped by the project was used by gangsters in a county lines operation.
“The 17-year-old was mixed up in county lines – drug dealers from a sophisticated market in Salford and Manchester sending lads to rural places to set up shop essentially”, said Jack Ward, the manager of STEER, the Salford Foundation charity project which is working with boys and young men at risk of being swallowed up by organised crime gangs.
“(The boy) was picked up down south with a number of wraps of heroin and crack cocaine,” added Jack. “That investigation is still pending, but under the Modern Slavery Act hopefully he will be looked on as a victim, as opposed to a criminal.
“He was sold a dream that wasn’t anywhere near as flashy as he was expecting. I am still working with him, even though he has this hanging over his head. That is what is brilliant about this project – it’s ongoing. I call the lads who have left the project every three months to see how they are doing.”
Ryan said: “I got kicked out of my first high school. I went to my second one and on the third day I was there I had a bit of trouble, getting kicked out again.
“The teachers decided to ring the project. The first time I was kicked out they found drugs paraphernalia in my bag, but it was just for my own use. The second time they began to realise I was starting to sell it.
“It stressed me out in school. While I was in class doing exams I was worrying about what I could be doing instead – like when people owe you money and you owe other people. It would be £200, £300, £400 a week I owed or was owed myself.
“You got given the cannabis then you had to sell it on and pay back the supplier.
“It was a lot of pressure for someone who had just learned how to do a certain type of maths. “
Ryan was quick to learn gang rules and more. “There was never any intimidation or threats to me”, he said.
“I’d try and get the my debt paid on time because I never wanted to get into a position where I was threatened.
“At first I just wanted to enjoy life, smoking weed every day. Then I crossed over into selling. I was trying not to be a child anymore but some kind of businessman, trying to earn money – illegal of course. “I was leading split lives – how I was with my friends, how I was at home, how I was at school, and how I was when dealing. It was four different lifestyles.”
STEER gets work experience placements for the youths and others are on apprenticeships. But physical activities, including football, golf, and boxing, and powerful films by ex-offenders revealing the true nature of prison life are an integral part of the project.
“At first it passed through my head,” said Ryan. “Then after a few weeks I realised that what they were saying was that, if I did carry on, it could turn bad before I was an adult, and I would be in prison before I was 18. I didn’t want that to happen.
“I just decided it’s better to stop now. It wasn’t easy. I had to pay everyone off that I owed money to, and I had been smoking cannabis every day. I stopped dealing, but I still get the calls, text messages, and people coming to my house – they expect you to come back.”
A work placement at a garage in Salford has bolstered Ryan’s ambitions. “Under a car my hands just work automatically – it’s like science.
“If you put me behind a desk with a pen my blood boils. I physically can’t handle it”, he said.
The project has got him out a trap and nourished his dreams. “I’d like to open my own garage – my own car customs where you can personalise your car,” he added. Ryan, 15