PROGRESS: In terms of crime, what difference have people seen since 1997?
Josephine Bacon: On a personal level I’ve noticed a huge improvement at Seven Sisters station, which was a major magnet for all kinds of crime and, funnily enough, the littlest things help, like putting up a notice saying contact this number if you’re harassed or something.
PROGRESS: Our main pledge at the election was halving the arrest to sentence time. Was that right?
JB: I think that is terribly important. Maggie Hough: I live in a slightly better off part of Tottenham, but my ward has some of the highest crime rates in Tottenham, mainly burglaries but now increasingly street crime. It’s a very big issue in my ward. I don’t think people feel that any progress has been made at all; if anything things have got worse. In my particular ward, because we are well off and therefore not that high on the deprivation scale, we tend to get less money from the council for things like street lighting and crime prevention.
PROGRESS: Has anywhere actually introduced any curfews?
Sheila Peacock: I’ve got three or four boys in the ward that are allegedly on curfews and they’re still getting around and creating trouble.
PROGRESS: What if we extend that to those up to the age of fifteen and introduce collective curfews on specific areas, such as on estates. Would that make any difference? Is that sensible?
Iris Josiah: I have to say I’m not too sure about the details of that. It seems a bit blanket, doesn’t it?
PROGRESS: But are the curfews on individuals making a difference?
IJ: On individuals, yes.
MH: I don’t think that the curfews would help particularly because in our area the bulk of street crime is committed by children on their way home from school.
PROGRESS: Is the solution to that more police on the beat?
MH: I think it’s not just about police numbers. Everybody wants more police on the beat because everyone perceives that as being a help. I don’t think that is the solution. I’m actually very keen a lot more on building communities because I think that is the answer. I think having a sense of community, having people around is important. We’ve been active in our ward with getting Neighbourhood Watches, which has helped a lot in reducing the number of burglaries. But, unfortunately, the problem is now much more street crime. But it also comes down to planning. If you plan properly you can actually help pacify areas, by not concentrating the wrong type of businesses together and communities together.
SP: I live in one of the poorest areas of Tottenham, one of the highest unemployment areas in London. We have a lot of car crime. These raucous youths have gone around vandalising cars and, at last, the police are able to do something. We managed to get these youths to court and a curfew order was placed upon them. But it also needs to be something more strict than a curfew. I don’t know whether they can tag them or something. I’m also on the Middlesex Probationary Committee. The whole of the probation service has been turned upside down and from having five probation services for the whole of London, we’re now going to have one as from April. This has created an enormous amount of problems, you know. The Government went into it without thinking it through thoroughly. London is a very big place and I don’t think that the one committee is going to be able to answer for all the different areas.
Gideon Bull: I think crime, along with the NHS, is going to be one of the two big issues during the election. We’ve proved without a shadow of a doubt that we are a party that can run the economy. But we haven’t quite got to grips with crime in the way I thought we would have. The perception is that we’re still what I call ‘namby pamby’ on crime. We have to be tough on crime. You don’t have to be right-wing, like Michael Howard and Ann Widdecombe – just tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. We are really going to have to crack down on it big time in the next Parliament.
PROGRESS: The Government has talked about making parents more responsible for the actions of their children, punishing them if necessary. What do you think?
GB: We have to put the onus back on the parents to keep their children under control. I really think we also need to address the idea of the community. If a parent has a problem with another parent’s child then we need to be able to restore that communication between parents, rather than people just going straight to the police.
IJ: But you can have the most responsible parents and the children are still wayward.
GB: I know someone who’s a magistrate at Tottenham. He works in the youth court. He said they go in and they are up for the silliest of offenses. But they are still committing crime. We have to deal with kids and tell them what’s right and what’s wrong.
IJ: I think there has to be a balancing act. There are some people who are really responsible parents and some parents that are irresponsible. You probably have to deal with it on a case by case basis or with some conditions attached in terms of what we can do. If it’s quite clear that the parents have done all they could to prevent their children from offending, then I mean you won’t punish the parents. But if you have a child who has repeatedly offended, and it is quite clear that it had something to do with the parents having inadequate control of their child, then, yes, perhaps.
MH: I have friends who have a child who’s got into trouble. It frightened the life out of him being in a police station for a night and having to go to court. But then he was bailed, went back to a second court, the police never got the evidence and he got off scot free. It taught that child that he can go out and do it again. My friends were so frustrated because they felt some sort of community service would have been the best thing.
JB: Our probation service is very poorly funded and probation officers are very poorly trained. We must have more probation officers. The probation service is tremendously useful because they keep children out of court. One of the things that struck me was how few children are responsible for youth crime. I mean, it’s a tiny minority but kids always seem to get tarred with the same brush. Also, because this is a poor area, there are an awful lot of cases that get to court that, if this were Hampstead, wouldn’t be in court at all. IJ: Yeah but it’s the policing and the CPS.
JB: Exactly. It’s the police deciding, arresting people sometimes on a whim.
GB: How is there that much difference between one borough and another?
IJ: Because the police don’t have any respect for people. But they have a lot of respect and fear of people in Hampstead. For one thing the person they’re arresting might be a judge’s son. What about that?
PROGRESS: What do people think of the idea of fixed penalty notices for a wide range of anti-social behaviour, whether it’s drinking or whatever?
JB: I think it’s a total infringement of civil liberties and an absolutely disgraceful idea. It’s a very bad thing.
PROGRESS: Is it just a civil liberties issue?
IJ: I agree with Josephine. I think it’s problematic because what you’re going to have is all the emphasis on extracting money from the alleged offender rather than actually dealing with the problem itself which might be more useful for that person.
MH: I can see the benefit in dealing with what I would call the ‘yob culture’, but not in terms of persistent criminals and people who are feeding a drug habit or whatever. The danger you’ve got with it, particularly for youngsters, is that you could end up with a competition: how many have you got, you know it could actually become a token.
GB: It’s not as silly as it sounds.
SP: I think I would speak quite differently from my experience in Israel. If you throw litter on the streets, you get an instant fine and also for jay walking. It’s an instant fine on the spot and that’s it, there’s no arguments about it, you have to pay up. I think that it would be a very, very favourable thing for us to bring in such legislation.
GB: I think you’ll find local authorities have been given the power to fine people on the spot not only for littering in the street but for spitting in the street. I just don’t think its going to work and it sort of sends out the message that we want your money and we want it on the spot whatever you’ve done.
PROGRESS: How much do you think drugs contribute to the problems of crime?
JB: What we have to do is introduce rehabilitation and the same with alcohol. Labour brought in alcohol rehabilitation centres in the 1970s and as soon as the Tories got in under Margaret Thatcher, these things were closed. We must have rehabilitation, it’s the only way to get people away from drugs, away from alcohol.
PROGRESS: Is our approach on cannabis right?
JB: Obviously, people taking cannabis are not going to go out and do terrible things like people do after taking crack.
IJ: I think that cannabis should remain illegal, but the approach should be that it’s a commonly used substance and that’s my position. It’s difficult in terms of in the court, how you sentence on it, etc.
MH: I’m a big fan of decriminalising cannabis because I actually think it does far less harm than alcohol. I think if cannabis is going to remain illegal, then you need to make alcohol illegal quite frankly. I really do.
IJ: But you’ve got to have some boundaries. You’ve got to have young people feeling that, yes, if I smoke cannabis it’s not the right thing to do because they do move on to something more serious.
MH: I think the Labour Party’s approach on it is incredibly naïve. I think our approach on it is completely wrong. I think we lose a lot. I don’t think we lose a lot of votes on it, but I think we could gain a lot of votes if we had a lot more sensible, a lot more mature, a much more measured approach.
B: Exactly, and if the emphasis were on rehabilitation rather than punishment it would be more sensible.
IJ: Yes, but the courts take a very lenient approach to the possession of cannabis.
MH: But that person might still lose their job or get a criminal record.
SP: It’s difficult to say, but I really do think that people with MS should be allowed cannabis because it’s the only thing that really does help. I think it’s terrible to criminalise them. I think that I agree with Maggie, it should be decriminalised and as someone who’s had cannabis tea, I liked it very much.
PROGRESS: Do you think that it would reduce crime?
SP: A lot of people who speak against cannabis think it’s the first step on the ladder and once you have cannabis, you will try something else. I’ve known lots of people who’ve taken cannabis and they don’t do that.
GB: I definitely want to decriminalise cannabis.
IJ: Yes, but politically and socially it’s not the right time to do it.
SP: There’s never going to be a right time.
PROGRESS: The Government appears very pro-prison. Are we getting the balance right between punishment and rehabilitation?
IJ: We can’t keep packing the prisons full of people. You can’t keep building more and more prisons.
GB: We can’t keep building new prisons, we can’t keep filling them up but what else can we do?
JB: There certainly should be more alternatives to prison. Every inspector of prisons has said how disgusting prisons are. I’ve only once been to a women’s prison but I’ve been in lots of men’s prisons. I mean, they’re concentration camps. How can people be rehabilitated, which is the point of sending someone to prison? The word ‘punishment’ should be taken off the agenda. If you don’t rehabilitate people, they will reoffend. Prison should be designed to rehabilitate people.
PROGRESS: You don’t think we’ve got the balance right?
JB: We’ve got to somehow try to get the message across that the Sun attitude, the screaming hysteria, is a backward and primitive attitude and the main thing is that it doesn’t work.
IJ: I do think there’s got to be an element of punishment. The question is the emphasis, the overemphasis, on prison being the only way of punishing offenders. I think if you’re working and you’re given community service, it’s going to be very difficult, it’s a form of punishment. Not only are you giving something back to society but you’ve got to make time to do it. We don’t need any more prisons, but there should be an element of punishment and I don’t think that comes solely from being in prison.
MH: I tend to agree with Josephine and Iris. I don’t think more prisons help. I do think we can do a lot more in terms of rehabilitation. We can do a lot more in terms of keeping people, particularly women, in society. We lock up far, far too many women for minor offences and I think that’s a big issue. On the other hand, there are things that we can do that we don’t do. Why don’t we follow a Dutch, or is it Swedish, model where they lock up the hooligan while the football match is on? I mean that solution is fantastic, why don’t we do that? So I think there is a balance – but we certainly don’t need more prisons.
SP: I’m in favour of the upgrading of Feltham where young offenders are because the situation there is not nice at all. Also, they go in, and come out experts, some are in adult prisons as well. I don’t think that’s the answer. I think that’s got to be rethought. I don’t agree with the ‘short sharp shock’ and boot camp ideas, either.
JB: It’s just a cheap vote getter, its demagoguery, it is terrible.