BLUNKETT SWITCHES 5,000 POLICE TO FIGHT ROBBERIES

SPIRALLING street crime has forced the Government to bring forward a
campaign against muggers, handbag snatchers and carjackers.

Five thousand officers in ten police forces are to be switched from other
duties to tackle street robbery after David Blunkett, the Home Secretary,
admitted yesterday that people in some urban areas felt it was not safe to
walk the streets. The campaign will also involve courts sitting later in
the afternoon to deal with muggers, the recruitment of more foster parents
to look after juvenile suspects, and an increase in prison places.

The initiative is to be launched in April, three months ahead of schedule,
amid growing government concern at another huge rise in street crime.
Figures to be published in July are expected to show that overall robbery,
80 per cent of which is street robbery, will have risen by over a quarter
in the year ending March 31, 2002. The number of recorded street robberies
is estimated to have reached over 100,000 over this period.

The increase follows a 13 per cent rise the previous year, and a 26 per
cent rise in 1999-2000.

Mr Blunkett said yesterday: "We are facing head-on the thuggery and
violence on our streets. We literally must reclaim our streets for the
decent, law-abiding citizens who want no more than to be able to walk
safely, to live peacefully, and to go about their business freely,
untroubled by the fear of attack. We want more police visible on the
streets, immediate action to speed the perpetrators through the system,
action to protect victims and witnesses and to ensure that those who are
remanded or convicted don't walk freely on our streets."

The campaign will begin in ten police areas where 82 per cent of street
robberies occur. The police forces involved are the Metropolitan Police,
Merseyside, Greater Manchester, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Avon and
Somerset, South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Thames Valley and Lancashire.

The ten areas in which the campaign will be launched account for 82 per
cent of street robberies. In the Metropolitan Police area the rate of
increase in robbery in the ten months to January was 40 per cent, but since
switching hundreds of officers from traffic duties the force has succeeded
in slowing the rate of increase to 6 per cent. It is predicting the total
number of robberies in the year to March 2002 will be 53,000.

Mobile phone theft, which is being blamed for the huge rise in street
robbery, accounted for a third of all street crime in London. A Scotland
Yard spokesman said: "While carjackings have been high profile recently,
the main areas of street crime have been mobile phone thefts, crimes
amongst teenagers directed at each other and drug-related crime."

The computerised co-ordination of information will allow police to identify
street crime hot spots and divert officers to areas at times when muggings
occur. Mobile phone theft, for example occurs frequently as teenagers are
leaving school.

Mr Blunkett's announcement at Westminster was seen as part of his tactics
to force more money out of the Treasury in the current three-year spending
talks. Under the initiative, which is yet to receive additional funding,
magistrates' courts will be expected to remain open after 4.30pm and to
open at weekends to allow suspected robbers to be dealt with more quickly.

Mr Blunkett is also negotiating with the Treasury for additional funds to
provide more remand accommodation for young juveniles, and prison places
for muggers.

Police will co-operate with education authorities to identify youngsters
with a record of getting into trouble and keep track of them in the hours
after they have left school or learning-support units. More places will be
sought for non-violent young offenders to be cared for by foster parents in
secure accommodation.

Mr Blunkett conceded that the latest initiative was an admission of the
failure of a AUKP20 million scheme to cut robbery which was launched last
year in the Metropolitan Police area, West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester,
Merseyside, Avon and Somerset and the West Midlands. He said that ministers
had been deeply unimpressed with the results.

Oliver Letwin, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: "It is genuinely surprising
that the Home Secretary should think it sufficient to reclaim the streets
in ten street-crime blackspots. What we need is effective long-term reform
which puts the police back on our streets and reclaims those streets for
the honest citizen throughout Britain."

Police and penal reform groups criticised the Home Office for launching too
many proposals to deal with different aspects of crime. A Police Federation
spokesman said: "We are not enamoured by 'initiative-a-week' policies put
forward by this Government."

Harry Fletcher, the assistant general secretary of the National Association
of Probation Officers, said: "The issue of the courts is not extended hours
but the inherent delay in the processes. Social services have struggled for
20 years to find foster parents, the juvenile remand estate is full and the
prison system is bursting."