Imprisoned in my postcode
At the age of 14, London should be his oyster. In reality, Reggie's boundaries extend no further than the half-dozen or so streets around the small Tulse Hill housing estate where he lives with his mother and two younger siblings.
To venture beyond these invisible boundaries which encompass his school, the local park and a nearby shopping centre would be to invite others to attack or rob him, purely because he had dared to stray from his home turf.
"There are places you just don't go," he explains. "Not unless you know someone there really well or you're travelling as part of a much bigger group. If you're on your own and you're a new face, people will rob you, take everything you have. The only way to stop it happening is not to go to those places."
The notion of so-called postcode wars may have slipped from the headlines recently but the territorial divisions continue to exert a powerful influence on the lives of thousands of young Londoners. The more deprived the area, the more they try to assert control over the one thing they can lay claim to: the streets
http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/imprisoned-in-my-postcode-6536199.html?origin=internalSearch
