Raab: boxing picked me up after the death of my father
COMPETITIVE sports such as boxing can stop children turning to crime, Dominic Raab has said as he launched a scheme to help troubled teenagers at risk of falling into criminality.
The Justice Secretary described how boxing and karate helped him overcome the loss of his father at the age of 12.
During a visit to a boxing scheme for deprived children in Blackpool, he said: “If a middle-class boy from Buckinghamshire benefitted from it, can you imagine what that formula will do for a working class kid in Blackpool or someone who comes from a working-class home in Newham?”
Ministers say the £300million is the biggest funding package in a generation aimed at tackling youth offending by targeting 20,000 children over the next three years and steering them away from a life of crime. It will include £60million for the first “turnaround” schemes where councils will intervene early with children on the cusp of turning to crime due to truancy, trouble at home or drug or alcohol misuse.
Mr Raab said he had seen at first hand how sport could help turn a troubled youth away from crime when he mentored a young man in Newham, east London, convicted of armed robbery.
“Boxing was a gateway, sport was a gateway to a decent level of maths and English at GCSE. It also then led to his first job. It was 2012 and at the Olympics,” Mr Raab said.
Asked why he picked out boxing, he recalled his early grief. “I can only speak from my own experience. My father died when I was 12. I came from a middle-class background so I would not know any of the pressures that many of these young people in Blackpool or Newham face,” he said.
“But I went up the hill to the grammar school in Amersham and I went down the hill to the karate club in Slough. I boxed and I trained in karate. I made the England squad in karate.
“You go there for the sport frankly but it is the confidence and self-esteem it gives you. You learn so much more. It changes the way you look at life.”
At the Blackpool family hub and adjoining boxing and sports club, Mr Raab sparred with volunteer Callum Penfold, 18, who said he wanted to “give back to the community” because of the help he had got from the centre.
“In the past, they have been here and helped me and kept me out of trouble,” he said.