Cambridge Liberal Democrat Manifesto 1998 Crime and Policing

With the advent of the new Police Authorities and new powers granted in recent legislation to district councils to pay for local policing, the role of the City Council in crime and policing has broadened and deepened.

Local people are very concerned about crime. Many areas of the city suffer extensively from burglary and many people are afraid of aggressive, bullying behaviour not only in the centre city, where students are often victims, but also on local street corners.

We have been at the forefront of promoting new ideas to help combat crime and the fear of crime throughout the city.

We championed, against fierce Labour opposition, the provision by the City Council of training and equipment for neighbourhood special constables. The neighbourhood special constable scheme, which is entirely under the control of the local police force, aims to supplement the community policing of the city with a force of special constables whose main task is to help local community police officers in patrolling their local beat. Labour ended support for the scheme when they regained a majority. We will bring back that support.

We believe that, if properly managed, visible policing of this sort, apart from its obvious deterrence and criminal intelligence benefits, helps to build and maintain public confidence in the police. The neighbourhood special constable scheme means that there are more bobbies on the beat. But at the same time it does not detract from the police’s main job of targeting and apprehending criminals.

We also supported the bid from the police for help in setting up a mobile police station to help maintain a presence in priority areas, including the city centre. We will look favourably on similar bids for support from the police in the future.

We promoted the return of park wardens to the city. The presence of informal authority figures such as park wardens can help to reduce anti-social behaviour and we will expand the scheme as soon as we can.

We support the Council’s various efforts to promote crime prevention, including Keepsafe and Gatesafe, and hope to see more support for the growing network of neighbourhood watch schemes. We also recognise the importance of the role of planning and design in new housing developments in helping to prevent crime.

Liberal Democrats believe that when a crime has occurred the most important person is the victim. As a consequence we have argued, for example, for more resources to be made available to Victim Support.

But the council must also help to tackle the causes of crime, especially the processes by which young people go astray. That is another reason why we have given so much support to saving youth work in the city from the cuts that the County Council has made in its community education programme. Although making sure that there are jobs for young people to go to after they finish education is probably more important, the diversion of young people into non-criminal activities is a crucial part of tackling crime at its root.

While we believe that there is scope for wider sponsorship of crime prevention initiatives, including youth work initiatives, we also believe that council funding is crucial. Resources should be targeted on areas that have (or cause) crime problems, not just, as in Labour’s Neighbourhood Community Plan, on those areas that happen to vote for Labour councillors.

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