Actor Idris Elba has said young people in London gangs are “not big and scary”, adding it is “sad” that society has “turned our back on them”.
The 52-year-old was speaking ahead of the release on Wednesday of Idris Elba: A Year Of Knife Crime, a documentary which sees the Luther star spend 12 months exploring the reality of the UK’s knife crime crisis.
Elba said: “The big thing that I learned in the room (when he visited Feltham Young Offender Institution for the show) is that they’re not big and scary in the way that it’s portrayed, gangs, balaclavas, black jackets.
“These were people, young people, still grasping on to their development, it was sad.
“It just felt like they were just banged up behind there, and no-one cares.
“Of course, they’re being looked after there, but it did feel like, ‘oh, wow, we just turned our back on them’, because we’re expecting them to come out of there loved and ready to get back into society.
“It was really educational for me, and sad.”
Elba spoke about “someone very close to me” who had gone into a gang at the same time that he went into acting, and said he had spoken to him about the documentary.
The Hackney-born star said he had told him “you’re doing the right thing” but that he “isn’t as hopeful or optimistic as I am”.
Elba went on to say that he felt big tech and social media needed to take more responsibility over the issue.
He added: “When it comes to big tech, there needs to be accountability within their own policies, and their policies need to be educated and driven by what society deems is right or wrong.
“It’s great that you’re a big company, you make a lot of money, got lots of social media followers, that’s fantastic.
“But by the way, we don’t like knives, we’re not going to tolerate you advertising knives to young people, please.
“We don’t like porn, we don’t like this, we don’t like bully dogs, it can be done in a society, and in my opinion, where democracy leads, it takes a village.”
The BBC film sees Elba meet Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who said that his party would commit to halving knife crime if elected, and the King, where the pair discussed solutions to the problem with some of the young people most affected by youth violence.
The hour-long programme will air on BBC One and iPlayer on Wednesday January 29 at 9pm.
