Labour's crime policy - it's criminal
10th March 2008
As violent crime has doubled under Labour it's easy to begin to imagine that crime and anti-social are inevitable factors of life.
Labour's approach has been wave after wave of new legislation, much of which they have failed to use properly.
Instead, after ten years of Labour's legislative and regulatory hyperactivity we have police officers buried under paperwork and tied to desks with red tape. It now takes ten hours to process an arrest, small wonder, then, that just 14% of a police officer's time is actually spent on patrol.
However, towns in other countries have successfully fought the battle against anti-social behaviour and won. We must do the same. A Conservative government will get rid of the red tape that takes up over one million police hours per annum, quickly freeing up officers to get back on the beat.
We will also dramatically reduce the current 29 central government targets for the police, replacing them with directly elected Police Commissioners charged with making forces accountable to their local communities. It is an approach that allows for tailor-made solutions for local areas, such as Waveney, rather than the current Whitehall diktats.
