26th April 2005

Will you increase the number of police officers on our streets?

Savings of £5.5 billion from cancelling ID cards makes possible reopening local police stations and more community police officers. Greens would also like to see the return of bus conductors and other unofficial social agents. Our policies on the causes of crime, such as effective drug laws, would (as demonstrated in other countries) reduce our crime rate. This would also allow more resources to tackle illegal drugs and people smuggling. We win all ways: crime lower, fewer drug-related problems, less hospital admissions from drug-related harm and fewer young people in prison or dying in back alleys.

Additional information:

Greens have long been calling for local policemen and women to be based in local offices to provide the foundations of a new approach to community safety and restore the links with the local people and businesses they serve to protect. The concept calls for specialist police officers, dealing with particular crimes, to back them up. but day-to-day policing would be the task of beat bobbies. In November 2004 David Blunkett suddenly caught onto the Green policy and even tried to claim it as his own.

However Greens would go further than Labour plans. We want neighbourhood wardens and estate wardens working from the same local offices as the police in Community Safety Teams. The teams would handle a range of issues, among them crime, anti-social behaviour, graffiti, rubbish and litter problems. These offices would be the first point of contact for residents with complaints about crime and anti-social behaviour. Internet links in each office would give access to Council services. Each ward would have an advisory committee of local residents, councillors and business representatives.

Greens will continue to campaign for locally-based and managed community services. People who have little contact with their customers and deliver services from bunkers in the Town Hall or police headquarters is not the way forward. Many police of all ranks share this view. Too often we hear people say: "I knew something was wrong when I saw a policeman in our street." Greens believe police should be part of the community fabric. People want them on the streeets in good times as well as bad.



How are you going to tackle the growing drugs problem?

Our drug laws are not working. They create a yearly £6bn black market that is irresistible to organised crime, who deliver unregulated, untaxed, and unreliable drugs onto our streets making criminals of drug users. Switzerland provides substantial support for the wisdom of changing our laws and offering maintenance prescribing. In a few years their approach has significantly reduced mortality, the crime rate, HIV and hepatitis, plus eliminated open drug scenes and doubled the number of drug addicts in treatment. Prosecuting drug users rarely changes behaviour. Proactive policies which seek to protect and dissuade drug users are the answer.


What will your party do to reduce violent crime?

Crime reduction requires more imagination than simply increasing the prison population. We must tackle the real causes of crime; poverty and lack of opportunity. We need to tackle the inequalities and reinvigorate our local communities; safer streets, more caretakers, universal access to youth facilities, seeing drugs as a health issue and more. Gun crime needs to be addressed by much tougher controls on guns, but also addressing the social factors such as 'gun culture'. We also need comprehensive strategies to tackle racism and other hate crimes along with a UK-wide strategy to deal with violence against women.

 
In 2003/4 Gloucestershire had 341 crimes involving knifes reported and 108 involving firearms.

What is your policy for tackling anti social behaviour?

Anti-Social Behaviour Orders do nothing to address the causes of anti-social behaviour such as upset family life, run-down neighbourhoods or resources to relieve boredom. Local authorities need powers to deal with anti-social behaviour, but they must address the causes rather than concentrating on punitive measures. These measures merely distract us from the failure to deal with deprived neighbourhoods and failure to provide services and support for deprived adolescents. Research shows crime is cured by prevention, not punishment. Greens want action on prevention measures like investment in youth services and mediation which is 80% successful in conflict between neighbours*.

Additional information: 

Currently ASBOS are being widely misused and are an inappropriate response to criminal behaviour.  Nearly all behaviour covered by these orders could in fact be dealt with under the existing criminal law. Proper policing and improved resources for deprived communities are the way to deal with anti-social behaviour. Already ASBOS are not working in many areas. The current appeal of ASBOs is because of the extra policing and resources are being put into the problem. We would preserve the interdepartmental co-operation and extra resources being put into the problem.

They also need no awkward 'standard of proof'. Lord Steyn in the Home Office's own 'ASBO Guide' says: "It is an act of judgement or evaluation" for the agencies concerned.
However many ASBOs are being used against vulnerable people with complex problems. The order does nothing for such problems as it can only ban behaviour - often non-criminal behaviour such as hanging around in groups. And they aren't working. An increasing number, more than 40%, are breached and result in people being imprisoned.

Many examples from Statewatch appear to confirm this:

* Melvyn Drage, a 48 year old graduate, threatened with an ASBO for putting anti-war leaflets through his neighbours' doors: Manchester council officials decreed his delivery of 50 Communist Party leaflets to local flats on one occasion, not at unusual or strange hours, was threatening the "peace" of local tenants.

* For using the word "grass": Zach Tutin, the 13-year-old who was served an order banning him from using the word "grass" anywhere in England or Wales for six years.

* For showing tattoos: Nathan Wadley, a 16-year-old banned from showing his tattoos, wearing a single golf glove, or wearing a balaclava in public, anywhere in the country. He was also forbidden from congregating in public places in groups of more than three people.

* For Wearing a Bra: Lacking the decorum expected of her by neighbours, one young Scot has been banned from answering the front door in her underwear. The 27-year-old also faces the threat of jail if she is seen in her garden or windows in just knickers and a bra.

* For being sarcastic: 87 year old Alexander Muat was forbidden from, amongst other things, being sarcastic to his neighbours!

* For protesting: Heather Nicholson, a 38-year-old animal rights activist serving a five-year order banning her from going within 500 metres of a number of the country's largest animal research laboratories. The ASBO also prevents her from contacting the
owners, shareholders or employees of any of these companies. Then there are the two protesters and a baby prevented from holding a banner and handing out leaflets outside Reed Exhibitions, the organiser of DSEi (Defence Systems and Equipment International) the world's largest arms fair. Police were eventually forced to apply for and subsequently issue a temporary ASBO to order their dispersal and ban them from Richmond for 24 hours. Not to mention David Edwards - a political protester who has campaigned for many years over issues such as health and safety to Rugby council, who was served an interim order, deemed to have breached it, and sent to prison. www.statewatch.org/asbo/ASBOwatch.html

Greens argue ADIS Injunctions will replace ASBOS. Local authorities will be able to apply to a crown court judge on behalf of individuals or local communities against delinquent individuals or to contain delinquent behaviour. The Crown Court Judge, who is familiar with dealing with criminal conduct, will operate under civil procedure rules and enforce the order in the usual way, which would include the power of imprisonment. If necessary specific extra powers will be given to the judge but the making of the orders will be much more carefully considered. This preserves the important distinction between the criminal law, which should always apply to to the whole population, and civil law which regulates the conduct between individuals or groups.

 
*A home affairs select committee report this month confirmed that mediation is not used enough to tackle antisocial behaviour. A report by York University has concluded that the Inclusion Project run by homelessness charity Shelter had, in its first two years to September 2004, had a “near 100% success rate” in helping 50 households accused of antisocial behaviour to curb their actions.

What's is your policy concerning the sentencing of offenders?

Prison doesn’t work*. Greens want ‘Restorative justice’ in which criminals face their victims in truth and reconciliation sessions and undertake some form of 'pay back'. In UK trials, 90% of victims felt helped by this process, and in Australian studies, violent criminals were 50% less likely to re-offend. Where prison is the only option sentencing should be in keeping with the offence and include rehabilitation. It is pointless spending huge amounts of tax on prosecution and imprisonment if you are just going to release people into an even more hopeless world, with fewer prospects than when they were sentenced.

Gloucester prison has come under fire this year for being over-crowded, expensive and having a high suicide rate.

Each place in Gloucester Prison costs the taxpayer almost £40,000 a year, making the prison the 18th most expensive out of 128 in England and Wales in the survey. Leyhill Prison near Wotton-under-Edge, being an open prison was better value for money at £19.997 per year for a place.

Gloucester Prison also appeared on a Government list of 81 officially overcrowded jails; 55.4 per cent of prisoners are housed in overcrowded conditions, 'doubling up' with two inmates in cells intended for one person - more than double the Prison Service average of 21.7 per cent. Perhaps unsurprisingly, under these conditions Gloucester also has a low level of "purposeful activity", averaging 20.1 hours per prisoner, below the national average of 23.2 and prisoners tested positive for drugs in 13.1 per cent of tests at the jail - above the average of 12.3 per cent.

The Prison Reform Trust has also revealed Gloucester has one of the highest suicide rates in the country in 2003/04: three suicides in a year, only four other prisons had a worse rate of self-inflicted deaths. The very poor conditions in which prisoners are being held and the increasing numbers going into custody do not help the situation. Prisons are not hospitals for people with mental health problems nor are they drug treatment centres. We urgently need a complete overhaul of the service.

*News (29/04/05) that the number of prisoners in England and Wales has reached an all-time high today confirms the approach is not working. We have 16,000 more prison places than in 1997 with 75,550 in our 139 jails - up 10,000 on 10 years ago and more than double the number of women. Juliet Lyon, the director of the Prison Reform Trust said the Government 'has to divert petty offenders into mental health or drug treatment programmes that they so badly need.' She also said that sentences are getting harsher and much longer, with the political climate being 'much more punitive' yet 'this has not made the public safer'. 58% of prisoners and two-thirds of young offenders reoffend within 2 years of release.