Tackling Crime & Anti-Social Behaviour

There are 10,000 incidents of anti-social behaviour every day, a million violent crimes a year and a 100 serious knife crimes a day. It's time to fight back on crime.

Under Labour, the police spend more time on paperwork than on patrol - on average the police spend only 14% of their time on patrol. It's no wonder recorded violent crime is up 44 per cent.

Labour's legislative hyperactivity and focus on headline-grabbing announcements have been accompanied by very little real action and by poor enforcement of the law.

Our vision is a Britain of stronger, safer communities, built on a shared sense of social responsibility and a restored bond between police and local people. We want to tackle, as a priority, the rising tide of violent crime and anti-social behaviour that is blighting so many neighbourhoods. Full details are set out on the party's website but they can be summarised as follows:

Effective prevention: tackling the causes of crime

Crime will not be fought successfully unless sustained action is taken to tackle the causes of crime. We will take action to improve school standards and inspire young people by creating a national programme for all school leavers, known as National Citizen Service. We will use the tax and benefit system to support families and reform welfare by allowing independent, commercial and voluntary organisations to take on the work of finding long-term jobs for unemployed people.

Drugs

We need a zero-tolerance approach to drugs, from our shores to our streets. We would introduce a Border Police Force to stem the flow of drugs into Britain, free up our police from red tape so they can fight drug-related crime and extend abstinence-based rehabilitation to help get addicts off drugs for good.

Alcohol

A Conservative government would take clear and concerted action to tackle the scourge of binge drinking on our streets and ensure that laws passed to deal with alcohol-fuelled disorder are actually enforced. We have also developed proposals to crack down on irresponsible retailers and drinking practices without hitting those who drink sensibly.

Tough enforcement and sentencing

New Powers for the Police to Tackle Anti-Social Behaviour.

ASBOs and other bureaucratic measures to tackle anti-social behaviour have not been effective. We need to restore discretion to police officers so that they can respond quickly and easily to minor misdemeanours. There must be clear consequences for wrong-doing that deter young troublemakers from going on to commit more serious offences. One proposal is for a Grounding Order.

Grounding Order. Our police should have the power to apply to a magistrate for an Order against persistent troublemakers, confining them to their homes for up to a month- except during school hours. If individuals break that Order, they should expect to find themselves arrested. The aim of this short, sharp, shock would be to help prevent young troublemakers from going on to commit more serious offences.

Returning Our Police to the Beat. The most effective weapon in the fightback against rising violent crime and disorder is our police. They want to be on the streets, empowered with the freedom and discretion they need to tackle crime effectively. We will cut the red tape that ties officers to their desks by:

Scrapping the 'stop' form, which officers have to fill in every time they stop someone in the street. In December 2008, the Government tried to claim that officers would no longer have to fill in a 'stop and account' form (Home Office Press Release, 22 December 2008). However, Labour still insist that the ethnicity of the person stopped be radioed in and still insist on a receipt of the stop being issued (Home Office, Press Release, 18 September 2008). We will scrap the 'stop' form in its entirety. We will also scrap 'stop and search' forms. Stop and searches should still be recorded, but by an officer radioing in the basic details of the search.

Piloting the use of new specially designed mobile jails to enable officers to process offenders without having to return to the station. They will be used in intelligence-led pre-planned operations, for instance in hotspots of anti-social behaviour and knife crime. This will reduce the time officers have to spend away from the beat. It will also deliver more visible policing to the public.

Revising the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act framework, which regulates police surveillance, so that in a range of circumstances authorisation is not required.

Abolishing statutory charging for a large number of offences. This means giving back to custody sergeants the power to charge offenders so that they will no longer have to fill in forms seeking approval from the Crown Prosecution Service.