Warning youngsters about the dangers of weapons and spotting those at risk of committing serious violence to stop them in their tracks are part of a package of actions to tackle serious violence unveiled by Labour’s Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. The new action plan sets out what Labour, together with police and local agencies, will do over the next three years to cut homicide, knife crime, gun and gang-related crime and sexual and domestic violence.
Key measures of the plan include:
* creating a presumption to prosecute those who are found carrying a knife and tougher sentences for knife crime;
* providing the police with 100 portable knife arches and 400 search wands immediately, and making more available over the next year to ensure this technology is available where needed across the country;
* a new £1 million campaign to challenge the 'glamour', fear and peer pressure that can drive youngsters to knife crime, and working with Be Safe to offer over 1 million young people access to workshops on the dangers of weapons;
* investing over £20 million over the next three years to support the rollout of multi-agency interventions and information sharing, involving local police, local councils, voluntary groups and health workers, across the country to manage and identify people at risk of committing serious violence as well as providing support for victims;
* increasing the number of Sexual Assault Referral Centres for victims of sexual violence from 19 to 48 to cover every part of the country; and
* greater protection of children from sex offenders - including a pilot in four police force areas (Cleveland, Cambridgeshire, Hampshire and Warwickshire) to allow for the increased disclosure of child sex offenders' convictions to certain members of the public.
Labour’s Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said:
"Every shooting or stabbing, every rape, every child sexually abused, every case of someone suffering domestic violence is one too many. Serious violent crime accounts for 1% of all crime, but where it does occur, it devastates lives, blights communities with fear and causes terrible suffering not just for victims, but for their families and friends as well.
"We are determined not to let violent offenders get away with wrecking lives by stopping them committing crimes in the first place. That is why I am today pledging that by 2011, we will have reduced serious violent crime, including gun and gang-related violence, knife crime, sexual and domestic violence and improved the criminal justice response to these offences.
"We have made good progress - violent crime has fallen by 31% since 1997 and the risk of being a victim of serious violence remains extremely low. We have set tough targets for the police and local agencies to tackle serious violence, giving them more local decision making powers to find solutions to local priorities. The challenge now is to ensure that the good practice we have developed is applied as widely as possible, to the benefit of everyone in all communities."
Message posted by Christopher at 07:48 pm, Sun 24th Feb 2008
When politics is mixed with commonsence, there never will be the right solution. No matter how good the idea, the question will always be who's going to pay?, rob Peter to pay Paul. Depending on the
amount of votes, depends where the money comes from and goes too.
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Message posted by John at 12:41 am, Fri 22nd Feb 2008
Most responses, apart from Julie, suggest the tired old remedies of more punishment, hardly likely to work in a country where we already have too many people locked up, whilst failing to solve most
crime. I don't believe things have got substantially worse than when I was a young man forty odd years ago, but we now get instant "reporting" of events, so it feels worse. I think the media is the
biggest culprit in both distorting the truth and failing to support real democracy - encouraging communities to take control of their lives. Instead they feed us a constant diet of utter rubbish. The
driver for the media is better viewing figures and their solution is to find a sensational angle even where none exists. I constantly dispair at the quality of our "news", especially when I have
personal knowledge of the issue. We are left with more questions than answers as they skate over key issues then spend ages on complete trivia. Has the media told its viewing public the level of
crime associated with feeding a drug habit? And if they have done it at all, have they done it as often as reporting on the death of a princess? Have they seriously and in prime time considered the
positive effect of controlled decriminalisation of all drugs? They quickly latch on to scape-goating of immigrants - it's the turn of the Eastern Europeans now - but rarely celebrate their economic
value or the richness they add to our lives. No amount of imprisonment, punishment, ASBO's, police powers, surveilance etc will improve the situation unless and until we have local communities funded
and supported to run their own lives. There have undoubtedly been substantial increases in public expenditure in many areas, including education and health and no-one in their right mind would vote
Tory or Lib Dem and throw it all away, however the way that money has been spent locally is something we should all be concerned about. Whether it's academies or trusts, much of it has failed to
reached the people for whom it was intended. Likewise with housing, money has been poured in, but public housing building for rent by Local Authorities has continued to decline. We don't need a
change of government, we need less listening to out of touch, over paid executive types and more real community listening. Working people, represented by their Trade Unions, have been right much more
often than the city money launderers, the business consultants or the great and the good. Time to do the cliche and get back to grass roots!
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Message posted by Ken at 07:55 pm, Thu 21st Feb 2008
People who carry knives should be locked up for 15 years, who injure somebody 25 years who kill LIFE, IN ALL CASES NO PAROLE. Instead of listening to dogooders who only care about criminals it is
about time the law abiding citizens and victims of crime are listened to.
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Message posted by Paul at 10:24 pm, Thu 21st Feb 2008
The simple answer is put a detterant in place, such as hanging people who commit murder, chopping a hand off if someone steals something, make people think twice, in Britain we are to leniant with
people, you put them in prison wjhere they get TV's, computer games, education, if i want any of these I have to pay for, and yet in prison its there for the criminals, doesnt seem like punishment to
me, parts of China give 99 years for carrying drugs, now thats what we need here, but no-one in government listens. What really bothers me is that I get stopped by the police for taking photograpghs
of buses because Im an enthusiast, but the same people seem ot do very little to stop people vandalising the buses, or annoying people with their loud music, or the people that smoke on the buses and
make other peoples lives a misery.
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Message posted by Richard at 06:25 pm, Thu 21st Feb 2008
Ms. Smith, You have all the right thoughts on the effects and affects of serious violence in this country. Unfortunately you provide all the wrong solutions; Sally Ann Bowman and Rhys Jones are two
people that still matter to me. There is no legacy for the loss of their lives in tougher knife crime sentences or search wands. There is no legacy in additional Sexual Assault Referral Centres;
surely this tells us the opposite is a reality. The answer must be prevention, prevention, prevention. All efforts must be centred on prevention. The police service still only delivers a circa 25%
detection rate for all recorded crimes with record staff levels. Somebody has to take that chance and increase the age of drinking alcohol to 21 years old; this is real prevention. This initiative
also helps the retailers with the young trying to buy alcohol; the NHS, the police services, car and home insurers and brokers, and family life. A network to prevent crime takes people, not thousands
of police constables but a million people; instead of one million pounds spent on an information campaign the Home Office needs a recruitment campaign. This is a real legacy for Sally and Rhys in my
opinion.
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Message posted by Pat at 12:51 pm, Fri 22nd Feb 2008
The Home Secretary is right and the Justice Secretary is wrong. How demoralising it must be for the Police to detect the criminal only to see the limitations imposed on the Courts in terms of
sentencing. The punishment must fit the crime, but also the sense of outrage among the Community at large at the extent to which criminals are seen to be unpunished/lesser punishment than the
outraged expect. Locking up criminals is fully justified as a protection of the Public and Jack Straw is misdirecting himself.
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Message posted by Steve at 11:50 pm, Wed 20th Feb 2008
My wife and I have voted Labour all of our lives and would like to continue to do so but I have to say that we are becoming dissolutioned with what we see going on in our country today. The parents
of a large minority of our teenagers have abandoned all responsibility for the actions of their kids. Government seems to be scared to alter and strengthen the law to make parents and teenagers
responsible for their actions which include drunkeness violence and anti social behaviour. Telling the children about the wrongs of alcohol abuse will do nothing they will just laugh at that. We need
to make it 10 years for carrying knives and apply this to all age groups, knives kill there should be no excuse to carry one. society needs to take these children from their parents hopefully on a
short term basis to sift those that can learn from a short sharp shock from those that need to be kept on youth remand. Its no good just blaming the ills of society for whats going on. When we were
kids in the 70's we had less than they have now but trouble involving knives, violence and booze were the exteme exeption rather than day to day news. Many people I speak with are worried about going
out after dark in certain area's and I find myself looking at this subject as the major issue when I should really be thinking about health and education. I think that sadly the Government have
seriously underestimated the impact of this type of disorder on society and if it does not think more about the victims of this crime and I dont mean just those physically or directly affected but
those that are concerned and worried by whats happening and introduce the radical surgery needed to the Law and sentencing and issue increased powers that the public want for the Police especially
those traditional Labour voters who live in the areas where the problem is worse then I fear this issue will sadly bring an end to this Government even if the Conservatives will probably end up doing
nothing more to help us.
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Message posted by Julie at 01:52 pm, Tue 19th Feb 2008
We could have community based education & child-care facilities with EVERYONE involved. Helping potential & new parents to learn life & parenting skills. Helping everyone to know everyone
so that the children respect the other people in the community through really knowing them & learning alongside them. Also the community will all know the children & this would encourage them
to also respect the children. The children could help with people who feel isolated in their own communities by EVERYONE being involved. This does not mean palming kids off but requires proper
involement of EVERYONE including their own parents & wider families. We do not need to segregate children off into school buildings which are un-child-friendly. We could radically change the
Education system & educate all ages together with a National Database of learning requirements FOR LIFE. We have the technology ... now we need to get creative. School buildings could then be
used for some cummunal activities to bring the different communities together.
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