Priorities for crime reduction

Speech by Peter Chapman delivered to Liberal Democrat Spring Conference 2005 on Sat 5th Mar 2005

I support this motion but it is a long and complex one with eight policy initiatives and you could easily lose sight of the wood for the trees when you get to the end of it.I ask you to focus your attention on just three areas. They are alcohol, drugs and the education of prisoners.

First, alcohol. It is the driver for a huge amount of crime. Public drunkenness and disorder, leading to assaults and criminal damage, are only part of it. When people complain that they never see a police officer on the beat, tell them to go to the local town centre after 11pm on a Friday night to see a dozen or more officers keeping a couple of hundred drinkers under surveillance.It grieves me that we have to spend so many police resources on keeping order in this way.

Drunkenness is also associated with many incidents of domestic violence. The courts are taking this very seriously now, with more prison sentences for threatening and assaulting wives and partners within the home.

And then there are the motoring offences caused by excessive drinking, leading to mandatory disqualification, and then sometimes to loss of employment, but sometimes to prison for those who ignore the disqualification from driving handed down by the court.

Next, drugs. Usually regarded as a more serious problem than alcohol because every aspect of drug abuse and supply is a criminal activity. Drug taking generates a significant volume of theft, burglary and robbery to provide the cash to pay for the drugs. It leads to very serious crime when rival drug dealers fight it out on the streets.

However I think that alcohol-related crime needs to be tackled just as energetically as drug-related crime simply because there is so much of it.

Finally, prisoner education. We know that when prisoners are released, they are more likely to reoffend if they have no home and no job. If they can't read and write, let alone have no qualifications, their prospects are very poor indeed.

There are two main problems. Prisoners serving short sentences are moved to two or three different prisons within a year. It's difficult for the Prison Service to achieve much if they can't plan, and then have time to carry out, a programme of education.

Secondly, prisons contract out their education programmes to local colleges. Their performance in delivering those programmes can be erratic especially if they have difficulty recruiting teachers who want to work in prisons.

Yet we spend about £40000 a year keeping someone in prison. It is foolish to spend all that money only to see him reoffend again because he hasn't learnt anything useful while he has been inside.

Please support the motion. Alcohol, drugs and prisoner education are the top priority areas we have to tackle.