By Tom Peck
Wednesday, 6 April 2011
In the cold, windswept tunnels beneath the royal parks they stand, in single file with mop and bucket, their heads bent, faces set in stony disconsolation. They are a 21st-century chain gang reluctantly returning the lustre to the shabbier corners of the royal wedding route. Over their blue boiler suits are DayGlo orange jackets with the words "Community Payback" emblazoned on the back, neatly offsetting their bright yellow marigolds.
"We set up this scheme because we wanted get the place sorted out and looking nice for the royal wedding," says Lisa Houslin, the Community Payback Scheme Manager in charge of the project. Over the next four weeks offenders with convictions ranging from driving offences to public disorder will clean the pedestrian tunnels beneath Hyde Park Corner, a key thoroughfare for the expected millions who will arrive from all corners of the globe to witness the nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
"I don't want to be doing this," says Robert Hall, a 21-year-old from Ladbroke Grove in West London, currently 17 hours into his 100-hour sentence for theft and handling stolen goods. "Last week I was painting railings on the Mozart Estate, doing something that actually needs to be done, in a deprived area, doing something useful, making my estate look better."
Click here to read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/youth-offenders-scrub-up-for-the-royal-wedding-2263664.html
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