Brighton's hate crime unit ordered a homophobic teenager to spend a day working as an intern at the offices of gay magazine 3SIXTY as part of the reparation order. The boy had been part of a group who rounded on a gay A-level teacher, attacked in Dukes Mound, Brighton in the early hours of a Sunday morning.

[...]

Sussex Police and the community safety team were inspired by similar projects in San Francisco, where anti-gay criminals were required to work for gay organisations as part of their sentence.

David Harvey, co-owner of 3SIXTY, said: "They rang us in October and said, can this person come and spend a day with you? My initial reaction was, I am not sure if I want somebody who perpetrated a hate crime to be sitting next to me in my environment."

Harvey and the staff of 3SIXTY debated the issue for two weeks before they came to a unanimous decision thatagreed to the programme - and now says he would do it again.

He said: "If we can change somebody's prejudiced view about us by admitting them into our environment, that has to be a good thing."

The teen was asked to research and find articles on the Net which covered homophobic crimes. Editor, Torsten Hojer said that the team hoped the boy would see the futility, and frequency of the type of crime he'd perpetrated.

Surly at first, the teen perked up when asked to write an article about a gay person in the public eye. He chose to pen a piece about the pop star Ian 'H' Watkins who'd 'outed' himself ahead of entering the Big Brother house. It seems the task enthused the boy who stayed oversaw the page layout.

Following his internship, the boy asked his probation officer if he could write to Craig to apologise for his crime.

Brighton's hate crime unit ordered a homophobic teenager to spend a day working as an intern at the offices of gay magazine 3SIXTY as part of the reparation order.

they would vex sensitive people