INSTANT FINES TO TACKLE STREET CRIME CRISIS

Radical - And Ridiculed - Scheme First Floated By Blair

A radical initiative to fight "yob culture" - rooted in a Downing Street
plan ridiculed when it was first announced 18 months ago - is to be piloted
by five police forces. At a time of spiralling public unease about street
crime, the forces in England and Wales will issue UKP80 and UKP40 fixed
penalty notices for a range of minor offences, including being drunk and
disorderly.

Crime has emerged as the single most damaging issue for the government and
a Guardian poll yesterday suggested it was the cause of a significant boost
in support for the Tories. Tony Blair's success in capturing the crime
agenda when he was shadow home secretary in the early 1990s marked a
watershed in Labour fortunes.

No 10 is anxious to have real measures rather than initiatives in place.
There is also concern that the public is confused by mixed messages, with
the government apparently committed to cracking down on crime while keeping
people in prison for less time.

The initiative has been developed out of a controversial idea mooted by the
prime minister when Downing Street announced that it intended to launch a
"zero tolerance" strategy on "yobbery".

At the time, Mr Blair was forced into a climbdown after proposing
on-the-spot fines for hooligans that could be collected by the police.

But since then senior members of the Association of Chief Police Officers,
led by the chief constable of the West Midlands, Sir Edward Crew, have been
assessing schemes that would give officers greater flexibility to deal with
minor offences and ease the pressure on magistrates courts.

Even though overall crime figures are falling, the impression of looming
crisis was underlined yesterday when the home secretary, David Blunkett,
announced that more than 3,000 criminals would be let out of jail early -
an attempt to curb the rise in the prison population, which is at record
levels. On Wednesday the prime minister headed a summit on growing street
crime.

The fixed penalty scheme for minor offences will be introduced later this
year across the West Midlands. The Metropolitan police will run a pilot
project in Croydon, south London. Essex, north Wales and the British
Transport police have also signed up to test the scheme.

Using the legislative framework provided by the Criminal Justice and Police
Act 2001, officers will be encouraged to give an ?80 ticket to people
caught causing harassment, alarm or distress, an offence under section five
of the Public Order Act. Other applicable crimes include wasting police
time, and knowingly giving a false alarm to the fire brigade.

A ?40 penalty could be given for offences such as throwing fireworks, being
drunk and disorderly, drinking in a place where it is prohibited, throwing
stones at a train and trespassing on a railway.

"These are the lowest level of public order offences," said the
Metropolitan police deputy assistant commissioner, Steve House.

"As an example, it could be used when someone is messing around in a public
place, standing in the doorway of [a restaurant] at 11pm giving lip to
people going in and out, being warned and not going away."

Mr House said people issued with the fixed penalties would take them away
and pay by post. They would still have the option of not paying and going
to court, where if found guilty they would get a bigger fine. Or they could
pay early and be rewarded with a reduction of the penalty.

"The whole point of this is to keep people out of the criminal justice
system and to save police time," Mr House said.

The Met would consider including cannabis possession as another
"ticketable" offence if the government downgraded cannabis from a class B
to a class C drug, he said.

Mr House confirmed that the project had been inspired "by comments made by
the prime minister some time ago referring to offenders for drinking
offences being fined on the spot".

He added: "This has led to the Association of Chief Police Officers looking
at the possibility of fixed penalty notices for a range of offences. This
will not be on-the-spot fines and there will be no collection of money by
police officers."

The tickets would only be issued by police officers and not by civilian
wardens or parking metre attendants, he said.

Officers accept there are hurdles to overcome, including the format of the
tickets themselves, and that there are bound to be unforeseen drawbacks.

One senior officer said the scheme was "a potential way ahead, but I
wouldn't want to put it any stronger than that."

Glen Smyth, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, took a more
robust view.

"It was a silly idea to begin with and this is only slightly less daft. The
idea that someone who is drunk and disorderly is going to give their name
and address to an officer is laughable.

"There are huge practical problems. What they need to tackle is the
bureaucracy of dealing with minor offences."