Showing some respect

A recent meeting of the Home Affairs Select Committee had an unusual guest. Among the policymakers and voluntary sector workers talking respect agendas and family intervention projects, was a young man in a very new-looking suit.

Ex-offender Adnan Mohammed had been invited to give evidence to the committee’s inquiry into the government’s approach to crime prevention. Fresh from a three-year prison sentence, Mr Mohammed is now employed by User Voice, a charity which rehabilitates ex-offenders and helps them speak out.

Although the committee members were initially interested in what sort of activities might have kept Mr Mohammed and his friends away from the streets and out of trouble when they were younger, the questions soon drifted towards why young people commit crime in the first place. It was difficult not to see Mr Mohammed as the token criminal invited along to the plush committee room in the Palace of Westminster; a sort of party piece to entertain the MPs.

But if there was any danger of the committee patronising Mr Mohammed, he swiftly put them in their place. When one member asked him why he committed crime, he launched into a speech which silenced the room. He was so eloquent on the subject of why he and his friends had found themselves drifting into crime and anti-social behaviour that he put the policy big-wigs around him to shame.

It was a socio-economic thing, he said, revealing the time he had spent in higher education before ending up in prison. ‘My world and your world aren’t the same, and we can’t understand you. When someone comes out to tell us to stop making noise, we don’t know who they are, we don’t respect them,’ he said.

‘I didn’t want to do the nine to five thing, I used to see people walking to work every day and think I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to wear a suit.’

At this point David Davis leaned back in his chair and muttered: ‘I don’t want to do the nine to five thing either. And you’re wearing a suit now.’ What was painfully obvious to everyone else watching this little exchange was that Mr Mohammed had clearly bought the suit for his appearance before the committee. He was showing them respect, which was what they were conducting an inquiry into. And he wasn’t particularly amused by Mr Davis, either.

Neither was he impressed by Keith Vaz, the committee chair. ‘I look at people like you, and I don’t want to be like you. I’ve seen you on the TV,’ he said, pointing at Mr Vaz. ‘And I don’t want to be like you.’

Whether anyone else in the room really wanted to be like Keith Vaz either was fortunately not a point for discussion, but the committee members would do well to take away some of Mr Mohammed’s passion for giving young people on the brink of the criminal justice system an opportunity to change. That really would be showing them respect.