Young drug dealers in Bristol are being offered free driving lessons as part of a controversial scheme to try and stop them reoffending.

Rather than face the courts teenagers in the Avon and Somerset Police area will be given tax-payer funded driving lessons in the hope that the second chance will help reform them.

The Call In program will also see offenders given career counselling, fitness sessions and English Lessons and even a course called Street2Boardroom, which hopes to turn ‘street hustlers into legitimate business entrepreneurs.”

Gary Haskins, Det Supt at Avon and Somerset Police, said to BBC: “What I do see is an awful waste of talent and bright young individuals that have turned to criminality.

“Giving those that have committed a crime an opportunity to see the misjudgement that they’ve made.

“We’re giving them basic life skills that perhaps weren’t available at the time.

“Ultimately for me, the risk is do we allow that young person to go back into prison, commit further criminality and have less opportunities or do we invest into that young person to stop them committing crime going forward?”

“Prisons don’t pay. If we get one success then it’s worth investing into.”

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