We’re pleased to share this guest blog from Vicki Ridley, Senior Development Officer for No Knives Better Lives at YouthLink Scotland. Drawing on findings from the 2026 Youth Voices Survey — which engaged 2,922 young people across Scotland — Vicki makes a powerful case for why genuine community safety has to start with listening, not lecturing.
Reassurance Over Fear: Why Community Safety Starts with Listening to Young People
By Vicki Ridley, Senior Development Officer, No Knives Better Lives, YouthLink Scotland
Whenever violence makes the headlines, the public conversation tends to follow a familiar pattern: more police, tougher penalties, dispersal orders, stronger enforcement.
But when we asked almost 3,000 young people across Scotland what makes them feel safe, their answers told a much more nuanced story.
At No Knives, Better Lives, we recently spoke to 2,922 young people about violence, knife carrying and community safety. What emerged wasn’t a rejection of policing or accountability. Quite the opposite. Young people want violence taken seriously. They believe there should be consequences for carrying knives and committing violent crime.
What they don’t want, is to be treated as the problem.
Reassurance comes from relationships
One of the most interesting findings was that the presence of police wasn’t automatically reassuring. That isn’t because young people are anti-police. It’s because reassurance comes from relationships, not uniforms.
They described wanting officers who know their communities, understand young people’s lives and build trust before something goes wrong. Police who stop to have conversations rather than simply telling groups of teenagers to move on. Community policing, in the truest sense of the word. That distinction really mattered to young people.
When young people feel respected, they are far more likely to share concerns, report violence and seek help when they need it. When they feel judged simply for standing in a park with friends, trust quickly disappears. The same applies to dispersal orders.
Reassurance comes from relationships, not uniforms.
They can provide an immediate response to concerns about antisocial behaviour and have been used in parts of Scotland, including Glasgow and Edinburgh. Understandably, communities want action when tensions are high. But dispersal orders rarely solve the underlying issue. They simply move it somewhere else.
The reasons they were there gathering in the first place — having nowhere affordable to go, nowhere warm to meet, limited youth provision or simply wanting to spend time together — haven’t changed. We’ve moved the young people, not the problem.
We’ve moved the young people, not the problem.
When young people feel unsafe
Our research also reminded us that most young people feel safe most of the time. Their confidence drops in predictable situations: walking home at night, travelling through unfamiliar places or being around intoxicated adults. Young women and LGBTQ+ young people told us they regularly change routes, share their location with friends or alter their behaviour to stay safe. In other words, they’re already doing a lot of the work themselves.
Perhaps the most important finding was around knife carrying itself. Where young people believed knives were being carried, they often described fear, not aggression, as the driving force. Fear of being attacked. Fear of appearing weak. Fear of needing protection.
That doesn’t excuse carrying a weapon. But it does explain why enforcement on its own will never be enough. If fear is driving the behaviour, we have to reduce the fear as well as the opportunity.
Young people also spoke about the pressures of social media, online conflict and narrow ideas of masculinity that tell boys they must always appear strong and in control. These pressures don’t exist in isolation. They shape how young people see themselves, their peers and their communities.
It’s why violence prevention isn’t simply about policing. It’s about youth work, schools, families, mental health support and creating places where young people feel they belong.
Creating safety, not enforcing it
Perhaps the clearest message from the research is this: young people aren’t asking us to scare them into making better decisions. They’re asking us to understand why those decisions are made in the first place.
That’s the thinking behind our Reassurance Over Fear approach.
Yes, there should be clear consequences for violence. But alongside those consequences must come trusted adults, strong communities and opportunities that reduce the need for violence in the first place.
Community safety isn’t created by moving young people from one street corner to another. It’s created when young people know there are adults, services and police officers who are on their side.
If we want safer communities, that’s where the conversation should begin.
SC Scotland would like to thank Vicki for this thought-provoking piece. The full findings from the Youth Voices Survey are available to read on the YouthLink Scotland website. If you’d like to find out more about No Knives Better Lives or connect with the team, visit youthlink.scot. And as always, if you’d like to get in touch with SC Scotland, feel free to reach out.
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