Archived decisions

POLICE AUTHORITY CRIME PREVENTION AWARD

1. Since its inception in the early 1990s, the Hampshire Police Authority Crime Prevention Panel has allocated consistently each year approximately 60% of its available resources to crime prevention projects designed to help and support young people involved in, or on the edge of, crime. This has been done in recognition that a substantial proportion of crime involves young people, either as the victim or the offender.

2. It was therefore, most appropriate, that the second Hampshire Police Authority Crime Prevention Award should go to Chief Inspector Mark Pontin who has devoted the past 10 years to helping young people, regardless of their background, to fulfil their potential in a life free of crime.

3. In the early 1990s, Mark Pontin recognised the need for a simple cost effective scheme to deal with young offenders. With a colleague, he established a challenge and adventure project on the Isle of Wight using the activities aspect of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme as its core theme, set against a contract of good behaviour. This very effective Scheme continues today with other similar projects well established in the two Counties.

4. In 1992, having won a Home Office Travel Bursary to the United States, Mark Pontin devised and implemented the "Getting it Right" and "Get Real" Schemes for delivery in the majority of schools in the two counties. The concept of deploying 20 plus virtually full-time suitably trained police officers into schools to deliver crime prevention, drug prevention and personal safety projects was a bold one, which was not easy to sell to a service which was understaffed and faced with competing public demands for its resources.

5. In the mid 1990s, Mark Pontin won a Winston Churchill Fellowship Award, which allowed him to travel to Australia and amongst other youth orientated initiatives he became involved in the work of the Rock Challenge. The Rock Challenge is an international drugs and crime prevention vehicle in the form of a performing arts competition for secondary schools, which focuses on young people leading healthy lifestyles and being their best without the need for tobacco, alcohol and drugs. The anti-drug and crime prevention message is delivered to the heart of teenage culture by using music, dance, fashion and media, images familiar and attractive to large numbers of young people.

6. So impressed was he with the concept that, upon his return to England, he was determined to sell the concept here which was no mean task bearing in mind that staging events in Hampshire alone would cost many tens of thousands of pounds each year. Now, six years on, the Rock Challenge, supported by its own Be Your Best Foundation, is firmly established all over the United Kingdom and in 2002, the Republic of Ireland. This year alone, over 12,000 young people have participated in 17 events in the British Isles, and the budget for the Foundation is now approaching £500,000 a year, much of it raised through sponsorship from statutory, voluntary and commercial sectors.

7. In presenting the Award to Chief Inspector Pontin, the Authority recognised that without his outstanding and continued contribution to young people, undoubtedly some would have become involved in crime for many years at a considerable cost to themselves and society in general.

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