Hanif grew up in a very small, predominantly white market town called Todmorden, West Yorkshire. It wasn’t an area that was affected by crime or gang culture. His parents were first generation Pakistani, and he was raised in a loving, traditional Pakistani Muslim family.
They didn’t have much, but his father would work every hour that God gave him. His mother didn’t speak English and was a dedicated housewife, caring for Hanif and his 4 siblings.
Early on, at primary age, Hanif started to display some behavioural issues at school. Looking back, the reasons for this were never really explored as they would be today. He had two close friends who were similarly disruptive in school and they would end up locked in the library – tellingly, one of these childhood friends was incarcerated and the other died of a drug overdose at an early age.
As he grew up, Hanif became fascinated by crime.
“I was in awe of organised gangs across the world – the Triads, Hells Angels, and Cartels. I wanted to be revered like a gang leader, a Lucky Luciano character.”
His disruptive behaviour steadily escalated. At the age of 14, Hanif was found in possession of two knives and was expelled from school. He wasn’t from a big place like London, so school exclusions were very rare and he gained a reputation. From there, Hanif was groomed into criminal activity by older males in the community and was selling heroin at 15. He was also introduced to cannabis and soon found himself getting into debt.
“My ego grew out of control and, as I and my ego grew, so did the severity of my crimes. At the same time, my respect towards authority and law enforcement rapidly deteriorated. I hated the police, yet I had no real understanding of why or where this hatred stemmed from. Then, at 16, I was picked up for my first assault.”
Interactions with the police and courts became frequent, cementing Hanif’s hostility towards them. He quickly began to see the whole penal system as a joke, but in reality, he’d never been stung by any kind of authority before, even with his parents - everything had always felt like an idle threat.
By the time he was 24, he’d had 10 years in the ‘street game’. He was living a parallel life to his family and the rest of the community.
“I had zero aspirations, zero ambitions, and I lacked self-belief. To help mask this, I adopted a persona of not caring, being ruthless and embraced being a criminal to the fullest.”
On January 9th 2008, an incident took place that would change his life forever. An incident that would rob another young man of his life – Alex. Since his arrival to the town a few years earlier, Alex had stirred up a lot trouble in the area. One of Hanif’s school friends had been slashed across the face and numerous other people assaulted. He was known to carry a knife, and Hanif wasn’t prepared to take his fists into a potential knife fight, so he armed himself and confronted him.
“I thought I had a plan, but we fought, I lashed, and it was a single stab wound that proved to be fatal. I’d never known what it was like to cause real harm to a human being. Because of me, someone was dead.”
Hanif was subsequently arrested and charged with murder. He was sent to HMP Marshgate and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He certainly changed in prison, but not for the reasons people expect. Hanif read the Quran for the first time in prison and this passage gave him hope that there was an opportunity to tip the balance of my past.
Around the same time, he was chosen to speak on the radio show Faith Behind Bars, where he made the commitment that to go on and change lives for the better, a claim that probably sounded very clichéd at the time.
Brian was his Resettlement Manager in prison and was unlike anyone Hanif had ever met.
“He was the first person that spoke to me like a human-being.”
Brian set up a prisoner focus group, whereby schools would come into the prison and the inmates would share their experiences to deter young people from crime. The feedback from the schools was very positive and Hanif was pleasantly surprised to find that it was something he was good at. He later took on roles to help others, such as a Buddy (peer-led emotional support), Diversity Rep, Resettlement Orderly and Foreign National Rep.
Hanif was then moved to another prison, but Brian stayed in touch.
“He sent me a letter saying ‘do not despair’ – he said that when I get to open conditions (CAT D) that he wanted me to come and work for him at his charity he was setting up. Brian was more than true to his word and when I received my CAT D (HMP Hatfield), in February 2011, I started working at In2Change as a volunteer.”
Hanif did this for 2 years, getting up at 5am to get to work on time and delivering hundreds of crime awareness talks in an effort to change hearts and minds towards offending behaviour.
In 2012, the Rotherham grooming scandal broke and Hanif was brought in to schools to give talks and defuse racial tensions. He also applied for The Hardman Trust Award and was successful.
Today, Hanif is Operations Manager and Safeguarding Lead at In2Change, where he has applied his life experiences to work with over 25,000 young people across the UK, all from different backgrounds and often with very difficult behavioural issues. He has aided the successful rehabilitation of over 50 serving offenders so they can move on from life after prison and, since 2015, been a trustee of The Hardman Trust.
“Irrespective of any upbringing you have had, whatever your hand in life, don’t allow that to determine your future and become justification to self-destruct. Do yourself justice, you only get one shot.”
