COMMENT: "Behaviour won't change" after dangerous tombstoning is seen in Southsea

Police in Portsmouth have stepped up seafront patrols after adults and teenagers were filmed jumping from 20-foot walls and ferry infrastructure into dangerously shallow water while crowds cheered them on.

The immediate safety response is necessary, but Pressure and Behaviour Transformation Specialist Naomi Whiteley, creator of the Firm Ground® Methodology, says warnings and dispersal powers address only the visible act.

She said: “When young people are involved, the question is not simply whether they understand the danger—it is why the need for excitement, approval or belonging outweighs their own safety in that moment.

“A patrol may prevent today’s jump, but unless somebody identifies and changes the pressure and behaviour beneath it, tomorrow’s dangerous decision may happen somewhere else and be even harder to see.”

(Watch the video embedded in this story)

Ms Whiteley is calling on Portsmouth City Council and its community-safety partners to commission a targeted intervention for young people already identified through police reports, warnings, antisocial-behaviour teams or youth justice involvement, together with their families.

The intervention would identify the individual pressures driving each young person’s behaviour without automatically blaming their home life, before addressing the wider patterns needed to create sustainable behavioural change.

“I am not calling for another generic workshop that treats every young person as though they have the same background, pressures or reasons for behaving as they do,” she said. “I want to work directly with the young people Portsmouth and south-east Hampshire already knows about and with their families.

"The objective is not simply to stop them being visible to the police—it is to create change that holds after the intervention has ended.”

She said that participants would subsequently receive structured support through the Firm Ground® platform. Outcomes would be monitored at six weeks, three months, six months and twelve months, she said, giving commissioners clear evidence of sustained behavioural change, reduced vandalism and antisocial behaviour, and lasting improvements within participating families.

“Portsmouth and south-east Hampshire already knows which young people have been repeatedly reported, warned or referred,” she said.

“That gives the city an identifiable starting group. I am calling on Portsmouth and south-east Hampshire to commission the intervention, let me work with those young people and their families directly and measure what genuinely changes.

“A city cannot patrol its way out of behaviour it has never properly understood.”

Tombstoning - an activity which involves jumping off cliffs or other high points into water - has led to a number of injuries and even deaths across the UK. According to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, , there have been 20 deaths and more than 70 injuries in the UK since 2004.

In 2008, Sonny Wells, who was 20 at the time, jumped 30ft (9m) from South Parade Pier into 3ft (90cm) of water. Mr Wells, of Waterlooville was left paralysed and will never walk again.