This long-read article was written by lower-sixth former Zion Kim, and shortlisted for the 2020 Fifth Form Transitional Research Project. The following provides a short abstract to his full essay, which can be found at the bottom.

Estimated read time of abstract: 2 minutes
Estimated read time of essay: 12 minutes

When I was writing this FTRP project, it was during a time when every social media platform, every news site was flooded with ‘facts’ or posts about racial injustice, and racism in the police force. There was especially a huge outrage due to the death due to police brutality of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Eliah McClain. However all these cases being American, I wanted to find out how serious of a problem this issue was in the UK. I had watched John Boyega’s speech and thought that if I was going to do an FTRP that I was interested in, I should do it on how ethnicity and financial backgrounds effect crime rates in the UK.   

The moment I started my research, there was already a clear indication that there were more minorities being arrested in comparison to those of white ethnicity, the most ethnicity that was being arrested the most often being black. Not only this, but although it may seem as if the problem of racial prejudice has started to improve, data showed that whereas the proportion of white inmates in youth offender institutions overall decreased in the past decade, the proportion of black inmates had been experiencing an increase. This was not the only problem, as I also found out that those who were earning very low wages in comparison to the average, were much more likely to be victims of crime. So what could be the reason to all this imbalance?  

Upon further research, I realised that this was not an easy question to answer. There was no straightforward answer, there were many causes and many problems that led to a simple answer. One of the main causes was the fact that households with lower income were often underfunded by the government, and that most minority ethnicities had a lower income in comparison to the white ethnicity. My research indicated that poor funding, poor education and many other factors eventually led to many financially struggling individuals, many of a minority ethnicity committing crimes and being charged. This was made no better with the police force being predominantly white, which could lead to more tensions due to difference in race.  

However, what would be really useful would be to look at what can be done to improve the situation, as feeling down about the problem would not make anyone feel better. Although I wasn’t able to find the best solution to this problem, some things that the government could try to do would be to encourage higher employment rates in the education sector and the police force.  

To conclude, I would say that my project showed that there is a grave problem that needs to be addressed: ethnic minorities are at a disadvantage in face of the UK’s law enforcement and system. There are many causes to this, however what we can do to help solve this is something that everyone can have a think about.  

To view Zion’s full article, follow this link below.

This long-read article was written by lower-sixth former Barney Doyle, and shortlisted for the 2020 Fifth Form Transitional Research Project. The following provides a short abstract to his full essay, which can be found at the bottom.

Estimated read time of abstract: 2 minutes
Estimated read time of essay: 12 minutes

Britain has a crippling overcrowding problem in prisons costing billions of taxpayers’ money. Two thirds of prisons are overcrowded leading to increases in levels of violence and poor mental health amongst inmates. This leads to longer prison sentences exacerbating a catastrophic problem. However, in my FTRP I propose a solution that is unorthodox but potentially very effective in reducing rates of reoffending and hence prison overcrowding. 

There are many well documented benefits to physical and mental health from regular participation in sport – such as reduced risk of coronary heart disease and stroke, type 2 diabetes, different types of cancer, reduced risk of depression, dementia, etc. Also, sport teaches lessons that are invaluable in life in general like: 

• Teamwork 
• Tenacity 
• How to receive instructions – for example from captains or coaches 

There are also reports of how sport helps to reduce crime in communities all around the world.  For example, crime dropped by over 10% in Chicago when the Chicago Bears played American Football with potential offenders occupied by watching the game rather than committing crime. The chief custodial officer of New Zealand has spoken of the significance of participating in sport in prison saying it is ‘A great way of establishing a community spirit’.  

Regular participation in sport has also been shown to have the potential to reduce the number of re-offending prisoners. Inspired by Project Alcatraz, a project in Venezuela using rugby to help prisoners in some of the toughest prisons in the world, I created a programme for newly released prisoners in the UK. Project Alcatraz has been extremely effective at reducing the reoffending rate in Venezuela and I describe this successful project in my report.  My proposals involve setting up a network of support groups using over 60 rugby and football teams to help provide ex-prisoners with counselling, food, courses in various trades, transport to and from games and free kit.  Arguably most importantly, my proposals would provide a support network of people all going through the same experiences and challenges who are able to offer advice and help when it could matter the most. In addition, I detail the costs of running this programme and demonstrate how it could be not only self-funding but in fact save the Government tens of millions of pounds every year. 

In my report I explain how sport is not only one approach, but in my opinion the best way to reduce the 18,000 people overcrowded in British prisons today. 

To view Barney’s full article, follow this link below.

This essay was written by lower-sixth former Dominic Stagg, and shortlisted for the 2020 Fifth Form Transitional Research Project. The following provides a short abstract to the full essay, which can be found at the bottom.

Estimated read time of abstract: 1 minute
Estimated read time of essay: 16 minutes

Throughout modern British electoral history, the useof political stereotypes to identify potentially decisive voters has become increasingly common within the mainstream media, and influential in dictating the way in which political parties’campaign. In the 2019 UK General Election, this trend manifested itself as ‘Workington Man’-an older, white man who traditionally supported the Labour Party but voted ‘Leave’ in the EU Referendum in 2016. The Conservative Party’s substantial victory was characterised by the supposed fall of the Labour Party’s ‘Red Wall’, a term used to describe traditionallyLabour-supporting constituencies based in North Wales, Northern England,and the Midlands, regions in which ‘Workington Man’ is concentrated. This would therefore suggestthat‘Workington Man’was extremely significant in shaping the outcome of the election.

However, whilst the significance of ‘Workington Man’ was undoubtable, the reasons that caused this momentous shift from Labour to Conservative remain less obvious. It is true that the 2019 election was dominated and polarised by Brexit, yet the root causes of the breaking down of inherent social, political, and economic barriers between ‘Workington Man’ and the Conservatives would appear to be more complex and deep-rooted. Therefore, in this essay, I sought to gain a greater insight into the various short-term and long-term factors that contributed to ‘Workington Man’s’ disenfranchisement from the Labour Party, that ultimately caused the majority of such an electorate to vote Conservative in 2019. These are divided into three similarly important sub-sections: Brexit, in both its exaggeration of growing social polarisation and, more profoundly, in the way it offered political empowerment, as well as cultural issues and economic issues. I concluded that 2019 marked the culmination of the interaction between these separate but overlapping factors, a point in which ‘Workington Man’ and the Conservatives became politically aligned. Furthermore, I argued that ‘Workington Man’s’ reasons for voting Conservative were rooted not just in the Conservative’s appeal, amore recent phenomenon arising from both Brexit and the Conservative’s cultural shift, but also in a feeling of marginalisation from the Labour Party that can be traced much further back.

To view Dominic’s full article, follow this link below.