My Campaigns
Crime
One of the main concerns I have in Wealden is the increase in anti-social behaviour. It is quite clear that certain elements of society, for whatever reason, engage in what starts off as quite trivial waywardness but can very easily spiral out of control. This is where it begins to significantly affect people’s neighbourhoods and cause a general breakdown in community relations.
I think the best course of action we can take is to be firm with such incidents and treat them as a nuisance to the public but also address the reasons why people turn to these acts of vandalism and mischief in the first place: namely boredom and inequality.
Much of the blame is put on young people whose activities are often mistaken for criminal behaviour. But for those whose actions do stray into the impermissible we must quickly seek to prevent an escalation to full-blown criminality. Local policemen who know the people and area can help to retain the tranquillity of an area.
If we do not give families who suffer from underemployment, poor education and no prospects we stand little chance of raising the game of their children. Encouraging youngsters to participate in sports and academic activities and providing the facilities for them to do so will promote the idea of self-betterment thus redirecting normal teenage frustration elsewhere. I am definitely heartened by the amenities available at Wealden Community Colleges and I only wish there were more such places for people of all ages.
Wealden is remains relatively unaffected by the types of crime we have seen recently on the streets of South London and I hope it will remain that way. However the increased requirements of policing at Gatwick Airport mean that there are fewer officers to oversee our patch. This is something the Government will have to work with Sussex Police Force to address and I have already written to the Home Secretary to seek assurances that the funds for this would come out of central government coffers. On top of this, proposals by the Government to cut the number of Community Support Officers, who assist with much of the back-up work, concern me greatly and I have spoken out on this in Parliament.
In addition, the searches at Jameah Islamiyah School put considerable pressure on resources available to the police. I further enquired of the Government how they planned to reimburse the force for the good work it did in seeing that a proper investigation was undertaken.