To ask the Minister of Justice for her assessment of the impact of the recent series of short films created by the Executive Programme on Paramilitarism and Organised Crime, highlighting the impact of child criminal exploitation by paramilitary groups.

Mrs Long

The harms that are most commonly associated with paramilitary gangs are centred around drugs, violence against the person, public order issues and bombing and shooting attacks. What is less obvious is how gangs groom, exploit and harm vulnerable young people to maintain their position in communities through intimidation and the threat of violence. To help to highlight that, the Executive programme on paramilitarism and organised crime produced three short case study videos covering the topics of violence, victims and child criminal exploitation. The first film launched on 1 May and has been viewed over 46,000 times on social media, prompting media and public discussion. The remaining two videos in the series, which cover the topics of violence and criminal exploitation, will be launched by the programme in August and September respectively.

Mrs Long

The hope is that the videos will serve as a prompt for discussion and learning to be used by EPPOC's delivery partners, engaging with different groups of service users as well as with all schools. They can be integrated into existing programmes, such as those by the Education Authority, Communities in Transition, Developing Women in the Community, Aspire, Engage, NIACRO and others. The plan is that the videos can serve as a prompt for people who may not realise that they or, indeed, their friends have been subject to, for example, child criminal exploitation but, on watching the videos and looking at the evidence that is presented in them, may recognise themselves or others as victims and, therefore, be more willing to report and make disclosure about that abuse.