Traditionally, crime goes up as the economy goes down. Similarly, as economic downtime can take time to increase, the crime rate can take time to fall. It’s also suspected that, due to the nature of the recession ‘08-‘10, there will be many latent factors such as a further increase in crime as unemployment sustains and predicted public sector funding cuts take hold (which in themselves have the potential to affect the provisions of crime prevention and reduction for students).
Although the crime rate has been, at present, kept from soaring in most communities, students are still the highest ‘at-risk’ group of burglary and are at high risk of theft from the person. There have been a number of student communities hit by crime waves in the past twelve months and it’s important public services are well resourced to be able to combat crime as well as sustain partnership with the student community and community services.
With the public sector’s belt being tightened and funding at universities under the spotlight, there is potential for crime prevention and security provisions to dip both on campus and in the community. This means it’s as important as ever for the students’ union to be involved in communicating with students and lobbying both their institution and community leaders for further assistance to reduce instances of crime against students.
When voting you may want to find out how their MPs intend to ensure student communities are kept safe and secure and instances of crime, especially burglary, is reduced.
Conservatives
Replace police authorities with a directly-elected police commissioner; strengthen stop and search powers to tackle knife crime; give police the power to publicly identify offenders; change the law so that anyone acting reasonably to stop a crime or apprehend a criminal is not arrested or prosecuted; allow the police to use instant sanctions to deal with anti-social behaviour; reduce the burden of stop and search procedures; increase prison capacity above Labours plans, in order to scrap the early release scheme; allow courts to specify minimum and maximum sentences for certain offenders.
Labour
Ensure that if a police forces fails consistently, either its chief constable will be replaced or it will be taken over by a neighbouring force; mandatory assessment of every parent of every child aged 10-15 who is under consideration for an Asbo; automatic parenting orders on those whose teenage children breach an Asbo; tougher sentences for knife crime; portable weapon scanners for the police; pledge to protect frontline police from budget cuts in 2011-2013; highlight schemes to reduce police bureaucracy; oppose elected police authorities or commissioners; add 15,000 prison places by 2014; ensure that serious offenders are added to the DNA database no matter where or when they were convicted; retain for six years the DNA profiles of those arrested but not convicted.
Liberal Democrats
Increase police numbers by 3,000 over five years; scrap identity card scheme; make police authorities directly elected, with increased powers; annual fitness tests for police officers; replace form-filling with new technology; create a National Crime Reduction Agency to spread best practice through the force; review police officers terms and conditions; seek advice from Law Commission and Plain English Campaign to make paperwork more simple.
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