Steve Beasant

Earlier this week, North East Lincolnshire Council launched a new service; the service known as Community Pride was launched on Thursday, March 18, with the aim of building community pride in the borough’s neighbourhoods. 

Community Pride is a combination of the council’s warden and environmental enforcement services, but with a new and improved focus of better meeting the needs and expectations of the community. 

It has been introduced following consultation with residents, which showed that crime, environmental crime, and anti-social behaviour are of greatest concern to the local population.  

Councillor Peter Burgess, the council’s portfolio holder for the environment and the green agenda, said: “This new and improved service aims to build community pride in North East Lincolnshire and we will be working with all our residents to ensure that we tackle the problems they are facing in their neighbourhoods.  

“Previously the neighbourhood safety scheme wardens and the environmental enforcement teams have worked separately. However, this new service is about bringing all their work together so they are working to one agenda. This will ensure we have a greater impact and the aim is to make a real difference to people’s lives in North East Lincolnshire.” 

Key aspects of the new service include:

Ø     New more flexible working, so officers are on the streets when it really matters

Ø     Improved street presence

Ø     Increased efficiency by focusing on the customer and cutting unnecessary bureaucracy

Ø     Enhanced graffiti removal, with closer working with Community Payback

Ø     Improved visibility and identity with new uniforms and vehicle branding

Ø     Better communications with the public so that they know what the service is doing and why

Ø     Improved working with Humberside Police, the Environment Agency and other key agencies 

Leader of the Council, Councillor Andrew De Freitas, said: “We have listened to the concerns of the public and they have told us that improvements are still needed in a number of areas, including high visibility patrols, dealing with fly tipping, littering and dog fouling. 

“Community Pride will tackle all of these areas in a much more efficient way. It is important that we work very closely with our partners, such as the Police and the Environment Agency, to ensure that we are all working together to improve our area. 

“We want to encourage residents to tell us where they are experiencing problems and we will work with them to ensure that their neighbourhoods are always a pleasant place to live and work.” 

Councillor Steve Beasant, portfolio holder for community safety and public protection, said: “The council wants to ensure people have pride in their community. The Neighbourhood Safety Scheme wardens and the Environmental Enforcement team have made significant strides in tidying up the area.  

“Our vision is to build on this success by bringing the teams together, with the name Community Pride, to provide an even better service in the future. We are committed to working in partnership, for example with the Police and Environment Agency, to help tackle problems with the help of the community. This is an excellent step forward and has my full support.” 

The telephone number for members of the public to call regarding any enviro-crime incidents is (01472) 324770.

During February, I posted a number of articles on this website about the monthly crime figures for North East Lincolnshire; January was an historic month – with crime levels at an all time low. 

At this moment in time North East Lincolnshire is seeing a major impact of some very good partnership working and month on month since the middle of last year crime levels have fallen dramatically, and once again we have gone one better in February – outstripping Januarys’ best ever performance! 

Last month, Chief Superintendent David Hilditch said: “January’s figures come on top of excellent figures for October, November and December which made 2009 a very good year for us. February has got off to a good start as well.  

“I would hope that we would all want to see a safe and prosperous area with low crime levels and so I am disappointed that some people choose to assume that good results for North East Lincolnshire can’t be true. We’ve got something to celebrate here.  

“The story behind the figures is that we have relentlessly been targeting the top offenders and some of the prison sentences we have seen in the last year have been very pleasing. At the other end of the scale we have been working very closely with the Youth Offending Service and many other partners to keep kids out of trouble.”

Yesterday, Liberal Democrat MP for Cardiff Central, Jenny Willott accused the Government of dragging its feet over creating a minimum price for alcohol which could help reduce drink-fuelled violent crime. 

Speaking during Welsh Questions in the House of Commons, Jenny Willott, who is a long time supporter of the need for minimum alcohol pricing, asked Wayne David MP, the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, what discussion the Wales Office had had with other Government Departments and with Welsh Assembly Government on introducing a scheme. 

Mr David said that discussions were ongoing on the issue but failed to give any details or a commitment that the issue would be taken forward. 

Commenting later, Jenny Willott said: “The Labour Administrations both in Westminster and in Wales have continued to drag their feet on this issue, despite increasing evidence that minimum alcohol pricing can help reduce violent crime.  

“While the vast majority of pubs and clubs in Cardiff encourage responsible drinking, their efforts and their co-operation with the police is often undermined by supermarkets selling dirt cheap alcohol which is consumed before people even go into the pubs and clubs.  

“A minimum alcohol price would help combat the availability of dangerously cheap spirits that encourages binge drinking and leads to the chaos seen in towns and cities across the UK every Friday and Saturday night. 

“The Government needs to act now. They have dragged their feet for far too long on this issue and it has had a devastating impact on our city centres and our communities.”

  “Prison clearly isn’t working to reduce reoffending and yet all Labour and the Tories offer are threats to lock up more people,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Justice Secretary, David Howarth. 

  Commenting on Ministry of Justice figures showing nearly half all criminals released from prison go on to commit further offences, David Howarth said: “Prison clearly isn’t working to reduce reoffending and yet all Labour and the Tories offer are threats to lock up more people.

“We’re throwing billions of pounds at something that is creating future crime.

“We can cut crime if we start reducing the prison population by having a presumption against short sentences which don’t work and moving drug addicts and the mentally ill into more appropriate accomodation.”

  The Liberal Democrats today called for the Sex Offenders’ Register to be upgraded to take account of the use of the internet in the light of the tragic murder of Ashleigh Hall. 

In a letter to the Home Secretary, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne called for both the failures of conventional monitoring and the inadequacy of internet monitoring to be put right.

Commenting, Chris Huhne said: “Our procedures are still lagging behind the development of the internet, since we do not even require the registration of IP and email addresses of sex offenders, which has now become typical in the United States. This would allow police to monitor social networking activity.

“It is also disappointing that Facebook, which was used by Peter Chapman to make contact with Ashleigh Hall, is the only big social networking site not to install the button that allows users to get advice on, and to report, suspicious on-line activity from so-called friends.

“If Bebo and MSN can install the button from the Child Exploitation and On-line Protection Centre, then so can Facebook.

“Until Facebook acts on this, its protestations that it cares passionately about the safety of people who use its site will look like empty words. Facebook urgently needs to take this clear, simple and practical step.”  

This article was written by Chris Huhne and was published on the Guardian online website

Locking up more people is a populist ploy that doesn’t cut crime. We would focus on rigorous community sentences instead

You wouldn’t run the NHS without testing the effectiveness of drugs. No sane economist would let you run the economy without elaborate modelling to test fiscal and monetary policies. It should be a given that important matters of public policy are based on evidence and research, rather than political whim. Why, then, is the field of criminal justice uniquely and scandalously divorced from this obvious rule?

In no other area of public policy are politicians as ready and willing to play to the public gallery as on crime. Since Tony Blair became shadow home secretary in 1992, Labour’s approach to law and order has been to try to out-Tory the Tories in being seen as tough on crime. The Tories were only too willing to prey on people’s fear of crime and enter into a sentencing arms race conducted in the pages of tabloid newspapers. Both sides continue to try to frighten the public into the arms of their party. It is this politics of fear that has created the dismal bidding war between politicians and the press on crime, a loss of faith in the police and judiciary, and the systematic demonisation of young people.

Rabid rhetoric has helped to criminalise a generation of young people. Britain is the sick man of Europe in terms of youth justice. We have the lowest age of criminal responsibility and highest rate of youth imprisonment. In Labour’s first decade in power, a million children were convicted of a criminal offence and another million were cautioned. After the ridiculous top-down targets of 2002 (where fining a child for littering or cannabis was given the same points value as solving a murder), the police found children were easy pickings. As a result, the number of children entering the criminal justice system rose two and a half times faster than adults.

We now spend 11 times more on locking children up than on projects to stop them sliding into crime in the first place. Yet incarceration just increases the likelihood of turning them into serious adult offenders. There are more people in the colleges of crime we call our prisons than ever before. More places are being built. Sentences are getting longer. But it is not working. Reoffending remains sky-high. Nine out of every 10 young men sentenced to a first short custodial sentence get out of prison and commit more crime. Yet the politics of fear dictates that both the Tories and Labour are pledging to send more people to prison for longer just because it sounds tough. Liberal Democrats would not build more prisons. We are the only party brave enough to suggest that rigorous community sentences are more effective than short prison sentences.

The debate about crime in this country desperately needs to be raised above the populist pandering of what sounds “tough”. It needs to be about what actually works to cut crime. Labour and the Tories would like you to think that locking people up has led to less crime. The evidence suggests otherwise. We have the second highest crime rate in Europe (after Sweden) and yet the highest rate of incarceration (except for Luxembourg). Other countries, such as Denmark, have managed to take advantage of falling crime rates to reduce their prison populations. Yet Labour and the Tories remain wedded to multi-billion pound plans to lock more people up.

The Liberal Democrats will not peddle the politics of fear. This is the promise we will make to voters in the run up to the election. This is the promise my colleague David Howarth made this week at the screening of the new film the Fear Factory (see you see a trailer here), which exposes our criminal justice crisis with forensic precision. It is a promise Maria Eagle refused to make because she knew Labour colleagues could not and would not keep it. The Conservative party was so scared of the question that Dominic Grieve dodged it by refusing to turn up. They both remain as committed to the law and order arms race as ever.

Instead of posturing on penalties, the Liberal Democrats will focus on proven methods of catching criminals and cutting crime. We will put criminal justice on an evidence-based footing by establishing a National Crime Reduction Agency to test properly what cuts crime. It will do for policing and criminal justice policy what the National Institute for Clinical Excellence does for the health service. We need all the evidence we can get if we are to get other politicians and the media to concentrate on what works rather than what scares.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, Chris Huhne

“Labour has been just as guilty as the Tories of posturing on penalties and peddling fear,” said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne. 

Commenting on Gordon Brown’s speech on crime and anti-social behaviour, Chris Huhne said: “Labour has been just as guilty as the Tories of posturing on penalties and peddling fear.

“Labour and the Conservatives have indulged in a sentencing arms race in a desperate attempt to look tough, rather than back more police officers which is the best way to cut crime.”

For women who use drugs, violence may almost be accepted as part and parcel of an involvement in the drugs scene. For some women in the drug scene, violence or the fear of violence is not only coming from within the home, from partners or loved ones, but from the street, friends houses, etc. Being robbed, raped, abused, or humiliated, are some of the issues they face daily.

Getting out of “the drug life’ is, for some women, a prospect that is riddled with complications and barriers. Some have been abused their whole lives, with stories of such despair. Women are often excluded from services because; ‘we don’t take drug users’ ‘she could cause too much trouble’ ‘we have children here’ ‘other women won’t like it’ ‘what if she OD’s’ ‘what if she brings drugs onto the premises’ ‘we aren’t properly trained’ ‘we don’t have enough staff’ etc…. It is essential that we all examine our own reasons for excluding drug-using women from services; encouraging them not discouraging.

Women’s Aid are actively using drug-using women in our Service User Group, finding ways to get to know their lives and understand their problems. We want to help them to understand they don’t have to tolerate violence against them, that violence is unacceptable. We encourage them into volunterring and training to help bring about positive personal change.

Drug-using residents have told us they are often labelled as junkies, the crackhead, tramp etc., when in fact some of them are trying so hard to cope with being dealt a bad hand. We should all ensure that women who use drugs come to know that they will not be excluded, will not be judged and will not have to expect less protection than a non-drug-using woman.

  Ahead of the debate in the House of Commons on the renewal of the use of control orders for another year, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne has written to the Conservatives to ask them if they will be voting against this renewal in the debate. 

Chris Huhne said: “We should not be the sort of country where ministers put people under house arrest without them even knowing the accusations against them. Control orders are pure Kafka and must end.

“Control orders are a constant reproach to Labour’s liberal credentials. The Conservatives have promised to vote with us against them but have repeatedly bottled out of doing so.

“Their line seems to be ‘Lord, make me liberal but not yet’.”

HUMBERSIDE POLICE is asking members of the local community for help in identifying property that was located in the West Yorkshire area.

Officers from West Yorkshire Police located the property in the Wakefield area as part of police investigation into alleged burglaries.

The people involved in the alleged burglaries are suspected of posing as officials for utility companies and gaining access to elderly people’s homes to carry out burglaries.

Officers believe that the many items located could have been stolen from people across the North of England.

To view the items please visit http://www.safelinks.info/newsflash-new.htm.

If you recognise any of the items stolen then please call either Humberside Police, tel: 0845 60 60 222 or contact DS Dave Watts at Wakefield District CID on 01924 206223.