UK News

How should Britain prosecute its drugs strategy?

Britain’s drug strategy is under the spotlight following the UK Drug Policy Commission’s (UKDPC) recommendation that there is too much energy spent on arresting drug dealers and not enough on reducing harm to communities.

Latest figures show that nearly 90,000 people were arrested in England and Wales for drug offences, with over one billion pounds spent on law enforcement, with £17.6 billion the estimated cost of the UK drug markets.

The report questions whether it is worth arresting a drug dealer if a more violent individual replaces him.

“Drug law enforcement is clearly not limited to the traditional role of arresting as many dealers as possible in anticipation of reducing supply,” said UKDPC chief executive Roger Howard.

“Drug markets will inevitably remain, and some enforcement agencies are beginning to prioritise their resources and efforts to curb the most harmful aspect of these.

“But to do this means having a much bigger picture of the harms being created and much better evaluation of the real impact and value for money of enforcement.”

What do you think of the UKDPC’s recommendations? Is the UK’s drug enforcement policy clever and nimble enough? Or is there a danger of the police going “softly, softly” on drug dealers by pursuing more innovative approaches?

Is Ronnie Biggs being treated harshly?

To the surprise of many, not least the newspapers and TV channels that were telling us right up until Wednesday afternoon that his release was imminent, Ronnie Biggs has been refused parole.

Reason — a bad attitude. 

The 79-year-old Great Train Robber may be physically frail but is clearly unwilling to show the required amount of remorse that would get him out of jail and could now spend the rest of his days behind bars.

All the other 11 members of the gang that held up the Glasgow to London night mail, coshed the driver and made off with 2.6 million pounds served just a third of their sentences. Biggs wasn’t even on the train on that notorious night in 1963. He was down on the embankment.

His son Michael says Justice Secretary Jack Straw’s decision is devastating, his lawyer calls the decision to keep Biggs in jail “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Yet the original crime was audacious and huge. Biggs’ cheeky hop over the walls of Wandsworth prison and his subsequent two-fingers to justice from the safety of Brazil clearly rankled with the British establishment. If he had been released, he would probably have become a magnet for old lags all over the country, as far as his physical condition allowed.

Do you think he should have been allowed parole?

On the frontline of the G20 summit

Abolish money. Punish the  looters. Eat the bankers.

Ageing 1960s hippies and their youthful anti-globalisation descendants joined in an angry  anti-capitalist protest at the Bank of England on Wednesday, waving placards and shouting slogans reflecting  a common fury at perceived corporate greed.

With worldwide recession destroying jobs by the week, protesters at the G20 protest in the City of London demanded an end to what they see as a global, predatory system that robs the poor to benefit the privileged.

“Welcome to Pig City: One war — class war” was the placard held up by a masked man standing on the doorstep of the central bank.

As hooded protesters scrawled “Peace and Love” on the walls of the Bank, Drogo, an elderly man in flowing multi-coloured robes and carrying an orb on a wooden stick, pointed at staff peering out of the Bank of England’s windows and said:

 ”I am here to tell these fat bankers to get off their arses and save the planet.

Is police action against protesters disproportionate?

A committee of MPs has warned police they must not impose restrictions on demonstrations “unless it is necessary and proportionate to do so.”

“The right to protest is a fundamental democratic right and one that the state and police have a duty to protect and facilitate,” said Andrew Dismore, chairman of the human rights committee.

The warning follows widespread protest at the way police handled a climate camp last year in Kent when demonstrators accused them of going in far too hard. 

They said police had used sleep deprivation and psychological tactics against environmentalists, including playing loud recordings of Richard Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries” and the Clash hit “I Fought the Law and the Law Won”.

With huge demonstrations expected in London next month for the G20 summit — probably the biggest since the anarchic Mayday protests of the 1990s – the issue is a topical one. 

Do you think the police here overstep the mark in their handling of public demos?

Stripping off for money

A colleague tells me of a quick way to make cash for anyone who wants to. His neighbours discovered a pile of old taps and central heating pipes they had lying around had more value than they thought. A scrap metal merchant gave them £75 for them. ”It’s a bubble,” the merchant said.

It may be a bubble, but it’s proving a lasting one and one that’s causing problems in unexpected quarters too. In my salubrious part of Surrey, local churches are struggling to keep their roofs on and it’s not because of the volume of their congregations’ singing either. Thieves are stripping lead roofing and flashing to melt down and sell on.

It’s become a multi-million-pound problem across the country. Police have urged residents to call them if they ever see someone climbing on church roofs. And the churches themselves have decided they can’t afford to turn the other cheek. They’ve tried stake-outs and security patrols. Now, some are investing in special coatings that leave a unique lasting chemical impression on anyone who comes into contact with them.

It doesn’t solve the crime immediately, the police still have to find and arrest suspects for that to happen. But it’s a hefty deterrent – if they catch anyone climbing on roof tops they can carry out a quick check to discover if they have any traces of the chemical on them – if they do they can then be linked to specific offences and prosecuted.

There’s a line in the Old Testament of the Bible where Moses warns the Israelites, “Be sure, your sins will find you out.” I’m not sure he had this kind of technology in mind. But perhaps churches ought to be putting it on warning signs.

Will paedophile scheme work?

A new pilot scheme which allows worried parents ask police if someone with significant access to their children is a convicted sex offender has been launched by the government.

The Home Office says it will make it possible for single mothers, for example,  to find out the background of a new boyfriend, or for worried parents to check out babysitters.

The measures do not go as far as ”Megan’s Law” in the United States that allows local communities to find out about convicted paedophiles living in their area, but Sara Payne, whose daughter Sarah was murdered by a predatory paedophile in 2000, has campaigned for such a law in Britain and said the new pilot scheme was a welcome start.  

However, probation officers and charities have warned that the disclosure could force some offenders to hide from police checks. They also voice concern that the scheme could simply be ineffective because parents would be unlikely to check on their partners while pointing out paedophiles carefully groom victims over long periods of time.

Is the scheme a good idea, or does it go too far or not far enough? Send us your comments.

How safe is your street?

Ever wanted to know how many crimes were committed in your local area?

Well, by the end of the year you’ll be able to get some idea with every police force required to produce online interactive “crime maps”.

West Midlands and West Yorkshire are two of the forces who have put information about the number of offences in different neighbourhoods on their Web sites and on Wednesday the country’s biggest force, London’s Metropolitan Police, activated its crime mapping site.

The government believes that the maps will help alleviate public perceptions about crime, revealing that the number of actual offences is far lower than many people fear.

“By rolling out up-to-date, interactive crime maps, we can better inform people about crime problems in their area, and enable them to have much more of a say in what their local police focus on,” said Home Secretary Jacqui Smith last month.

“The latest annual crime figures showed another drop in crime nationwide but it’s important that people understand what this means to them in their local area and where challenges remain.”

New London Mayor Boris Johnson, who made providing the maps a key manifesto commitment, said it gave people the chance to see how their local police were performing.

Is the DNA database too big?

Whose DNA is it anyway?

A “citizens’ inquiry” instigated by the Human Genetics Commission, a government advisory body, wants the records of people who have not been convicted, or whose convictions are long spent, to be deleted from the forensic National DNA Database and says the whole archive should be overseen by an independent body.

The database was established in 1995 in Britain – the country where scientists first pioneered the technique of DNA fingerprinting.

It now contains genetic profiles on more than 4 million people, representing the highest proportion of any population on a forensic DNA database in the world, at over 6 percent.

A future government might misuse the information, members of the inquiry fear. One  says keeping all the DNA records would be the first step towards a totalitarian state.

Police, though, find the database a boon, especially in trying to solve ”cold” cases from the past.

What do you think? Is the database becoming too big?

RIP speed cameras?

Conservative Swindon council is planning to pull the plug on the 400,000-pound annual grant it makes towards running its speed cameras, saying the money could be better spent on other traffic-calming measures.

Its head of highways, Councillor Peter Greenhalgh, is widely quoted in newspapers as saying cameras are “a blatant tax on motorists.”

Local councils can no longer keep the fines the cameras bring in, which may explain why they may feel less enthusiastic about them than before, but there are plenty of other bodies like the AA which have always felt cameras are over-used and no substitute for active policing.

The Department for Transport says some 1,745 deaths and serious injuries are prevented every year by the cameras.

Would you be happy to see other councils follow Swindon’s example or do you believe that speed cameras are a necessary evil to improve road safety?

Reaction to Brown’s 42-day detention vote victory

 Gordon Brown may have won the 42-day detention vote, but the victory was ”hollow”, ”shameful” or “tactical”, depending on which newspaper you read. 

Under the headline “Westminster for Sale”, The Times said Brown had humiliated parliament with a victory secured through bribery and bartering.

“The prime minister staked his reputation on 42 days to look strong. Instead, he looks weaker. He has failed to win the argument, so has chosen to strike a deal,” it said in an editorial.

“This hollow victory will buy him time in the Westminster village, but at a sad and further cost to parliament’s prestige.”

Brown scraped through thanks to the support from Democratic Unionist MPs, the Daily Telegraph said in an editorial. And he made so many concessions that the legislation ended up looking like a “dog’s breakfast”.

“Why does it feel so much like a defeat?” the paper asked.

It’s because he “lost the argument and shredded his majority”, the Guardian said. He only won “thanks to backroom deals”.