Angela Watkinson

Conservative Party | Upminster

Crime

Angela Watkinson (Upminster) (Con): The premise of my speech was to illustrate that if antisocial behaviour and low-level crime go unchecked, they escalate into more serious crime and, at the other end of the spectrum, to the gun crime that has been the subject of this debate.

I was in the main police station in my constituency recently for the celebration of the 175th anniversary of the Metropolitan police. It was a rather happy occasion, with a splendid cake—it was a shame to cut it. While I was there, I made a shocking discovery. A row of posters on the wall showed the successes of Havering police in exceeding the targets set by the Metropolitan police for clearing up crime in certain categories. Havering was first out of 32 London boroughs in the detection rate for total notifiable offences, second for vehicle crime, fourth for robbery and 12th for residential robbery. I hope that the Minister will join me in congratulating Havering police on their excellent achievement in scoring way above its targets. What shocked me was that the Metropolitan police clear-up rate for total notifiable offences is 20 per cent. It gets worse. For residential burglary, the figure is 17 per cent., for robbery 16 per cent. and—wait for it because this is the real shocker—for vehicle crime it is 5 per cent. If the figure were any lower, stealing, damaging or breaking into a car would be a non-crime. This is corporate trivialisation of crimes that are the breeding ground for yet more serious crime. Such crimes need to be treated seriously so that young criminals do not become bolder and turn into serious criminals.

I telephoned my main police station last night and asked why it had taken so long for Havering to issue its first antisocial behaviour order. I asked what police resources and time have to be invested into achieving an ASBO. An officer replied and referred to the youngster involved. He said:

"I identified him as a burgeoning community problem in July 2003 when he was subject of an ABC"—

an acceptable behaviour contract—

"which he breached twice . . . In 2004, he seemed to take off and from April-August committed ten substantive offences of shoplifting/criminal damage/assault and public order, which were not proceeded with essentially because witnesses and victims were unwilling to attend Court through in the main fear of reprisals. There were three other offences which did go to Court—robbery, assault and burglary—for the last, after two supervision orders had failed miserably, he was sentenced to 4 months in prison at a YOI."

The officer initiated proceedings for an ASBO in June 2004 and finally achieved his objective when it was granted on 22 September. He says:

"I would not even try to assess the number of hours I have been involved upon this project, but needless to say it was considerable, revisiting victims, reinvestigating allegations, attempting to persuade victims to put their fears to one side and attend Court (unsuccessful), attending multi-agency case conferences, taking third party statements so that I could present the case, jumping over a succession of new hurdles erected by the Defence and sanctioned by the Court. This is on the face of it a user friendly piece of legislation, but in reality, which is exacerbated by the misunderstanding and misinterpretation by the Courts, but mainly the Clerks of the Courts, it has become so unwieldy that Officers tend to shy away from the prospect."

The measure would be an excellent tool if it were more user-friendly. Although the concept behind ASBOs is good, their methodology needs serious revision. The police need the freedom to use the targets that they feel are most appropriate to their local circumstances.

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