"I believe burglars leave their human rights outside the front door when they break into your home"
David Cameron January 2010
Action on crime
"Law and Order is in Meltdown". These are the words of Gordon Brown's security adviser, ex-Met boss Lord Stevens. Stevens said under Labour "The rules of the jungle now prevail. Law and order is in meltdown".
Nick de Bois keeps close to what the police are doing to try and control crime. Locally he served until recently as Chairman of the Chase Ward CAPE which has responsibility for directing the policing priorities for the Safer Neighbourhood teams. Nick also conducted a 12,000-strong Crime survey which found provided information on violent crime, anti-social behaviour and drug abuse in our neighbourhoods, and passed the results and information directly to the Borough Police Commander.
Nationally Nick shares your concerns that throughout the country we have seen an astonishing increase in violent crimes. Here are the facts:
1,046,437 violent crimes, doubled from 502,778 in 1998- 5,256 people in Enfield were victims of violent crime in 2005/2006
- There was also 2,433 burglaries in Enfield, well above the national average
- Gun crime doubled to 11,084, up from 5,209 in 1998
- Police can't go on the beat because they're tied up filling in forms
- £20 billion to be wasted on ID cards that won't make us any safer
So Nick de Bois wants to see long term action to reduce crime. The key measures are:
That the bond between the police and the public must be rebuilt, and the first step will be cutting the paperwork which ties officers to their desks:
- We will scrap stop and search forms and cut bureaucracy to allow police officers to spend more of their time on the streets fighting crime
- We will reform the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which regulates police surveillance, so that authorisation is not needed in straightforward cases. At the same time, we will take steps to prevent the misuse of surveillance powers by local authorities.
- We will strengthen police powers of stop and search to enable officers to respond decisively to incidents or threats of serious crime
We will take our reforms further by empowering local people as well as police officers. By introducing directly-elected police commissioners, and by requiring all police forces to publish crime maps and hold quarterly beat meetings, we will enable local communities to hold their police force to account.
To ensure that we have adequate space to house offenders, our plans for renewal of the prison estate will increase capacity by 5,000 places above Labour’s plans.
We will scrap Labour’s disastorous early release scheme and introduce honesty in sentencing. Offenders will receive minimum and maximum sentences; there will be no possibility of parole before the minimum has been served, and release before the maximum point will be conditional on the prisoner’s behaviour and progress in prison.
We will also legislate to create a presumption that anyone convicted of knife crimes will receive a prison sentence.
We cannot tackle crime unless we also address the causes of crime, such as family breakdown, drug abuse and binge drinking. But the fight back starts with getting more police officers back on to the streets. Only then can we begin to rebuild the safer communities we all want.
Nick thinks we should have more Police on the streets. That we should introduce zero tolerance policing. We need a border Police to stop drugs, gun running and people trafficking. We should help parents to take control and give greater support to teachers.
Get involved! There are lots of things you can do to help us get Crime Action:
- Vote below in our online poll
- Help us deliver leaflets with ideas on tackling crime locally
- Hold a house meeting where Nick de Bois will come and explain to your friends why change is so important (email Nick direct at nickdebois@enfieldnorth.org or phone / write)
