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UK cities become 'no-go areas' after dark
Growing anti-social behaviour has turned Britains cities and towns into no-go areas after dark, the chairman of an influential parliamentary committee said on Tuesday. Dealing with louts and tearways costs £3.4 billion a year, but the Home Office has still not discovered the most effective way to tackle the problem, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said. No civilised country should have to put up with what can seem like an occupying army loose in the streets, said PAC Chairman Edward Leigh. After dark, our cities and towns are fast becoming no-go areas, with behaviour there ranging from drunken skylarking and intimidation, to out and out criminal activity. Dealing with anti-social behaviour is a priority issue for the Labour government. Leigh said it had introduced a barrage of new powers for the police and local authorities. But the PAC said the Home Office had no idea which of these measures were the most effective. National Audit Office research last December examined 893 cases involving three powers - ASBOs (anti-social behaviour orders), acceptable behaviour contracts and warning letters. The study found that in 65 percent of cases individuals desisted from nuisance behaviour after one intervention. However, more than half of those given ASBOs broke the terms of their orders while one individual, with 271 criminal convictions, contravened his ASBO on 25 occasions.
Posted by: Fred 2007-07-25 |
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| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=194456 |