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rule britannia

Young Reoffenders – Part Two

Meeting Britain's "lost boys" – young men who've spent so much of their lives in Young Offenders' Institutes, they'd rather be inside than in the real world.

​In a new episode of Rule Britannia, VICE meets "Saky's Finest" – a gang of young reoffenders based on the Saxton Road estate in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. Locked into a cycle of reoffending and going to jail, some of these guys have spent so much of their youth in Young Offenders' Institutes that they'd rather be back inside than in the real world.

In Part One, we met 20-year-old Coopz who looking at a serious stretch in adult jail, and Ross and Nathan, the "olders" of the group who try to stop him from going down the same paths they did. We also met Pitts, arguably the most institutionalised member of the gang, who has only seen the outside world for a matter of weeks in the last six years.

In Part Two, things start to unravel for the boys of Saxton Road. Shop owner Reggie has had a grievance exacted upon him in front of his shop and Coopz, who has been rebailed, risks falling back into the cycle of reoffending that might keep him from his girlfriend for nearly a decade.

Ross goes to see Ali, who is on the run from the police and fishing at a nearby lake, where he recounts the tale of when he bottled himself on purpose in a fight. Meanwhile, after only a few weeks out of prison, Pitts has reoffended and is left to consider where it all went wrong for him and his mates.

@rdrhysjames