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Broadband Access

Mr. Jim Cunningham: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proportion of (a) police forces and (b) probation services have broadband access; and what targets have been set for full broadband access in each case. [95743]

Mr. Denham [holding answer 7 February 2003]: All police forces have access to a secure, high capacity Internet connection via the Criminal Justice Extranet

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(CJX), which provides secure messaging, information and document exchange and user directories for the police forces.

The CJX provides forces with access to the Internet and there are no additional plans or targets to introduce separate broadband access.

Many Probation Areas have Internet access via stand-alone PC's. It is not known what proportion of these have broadband access and no targets have been set for the provision of broadband access.

Burnley Riots

Mr. Gordon Prentice: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the costs of policing the disturbances in Burnley in 2001 were. [96597]

Mr. Denham: I understand from the Chief Constable (Mr Paul Stephenson QPM) that the additional costs of policing the disturbances was 1.3million. On 30 January 2002 we announced a special grant of £820,000. This grant met 64 per cent. of the additional costs incurred by the force.

Child Protection

Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many full-time police officers are assigned to child protection departments in each constabulary in England and Wales. [96023]

Mr. Denham: Information is not collected centrally on the number of police officers deployed to child protection duties. The allocation of resources within a force is decided locally by the Chief Constable or, in the case of the Metropolitan Police Service, the Commissioner. Under the National Policing Plan all forces and authorities are expected to review their force policy and local service plans to ensure that child protection is given the appropriate priority.

Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what action is being taken to raise the priority level of child protection policing in policing plans. [96024]

Mr. Denham: The National Policing Plan (NPP) specifically asks all police forces and authorities to review their force policy and local policing plans to ensure that child protection is given the appropriate priority.

Police forces and authorities are required to take into account the contents of the NPP when preparing their local annual and three-year policing plans. Guidance on three-year plans has been issued, and asks forces and authorities to submit their three-year plans to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary by 31 March 2003.

Closed Circuit Television

Mr. Evans: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what research studies he has commissioned on the efficacy of CCTV in reducing crime; and what the results were. [96762]

Mr. Denham: Under the Crime Reduction Programme CCTV Initiative around £170 million will be spent between 1998 and 2003 funding 684 CCTV

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schemes. More than 550 of these schemes are already fully operational, with further schemes coming on line weekly.

As a condition of funding, each scheme is required to undertake an independent evaluation of its effectiveness as a tool to assist the police and reduce crime and the fear of crime. These evaluations will cover implementation, impact and cost effectiveness. In addition, to help ensure maximum impact and sustainability of CCTV, a £1.5 million Home Office funded national evaluation programme is being carried out by the Scarman Centre, University of Leicester, on 17 approved CCTV initiative schemes. The final report will not be published until 2004 but interim reports will be available before then. The first—providing guidance for practitioners on implementation of CCTV schemes—is due for publication shortly.

Crime Data

Mr. Laws : To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent assessment he has made of the links between crime levels and (a) poverty, (b) income inequality, (c) legal drug abuse, (d) illegal use of drugs and (e) family break-up; and if he will make a statement. [95724]

Mr. Denham: The British Crime Survey (BCS) 2001–02 provides information on victims of crime and includes statistics on risks of crime by household type for burglary (table 4.03), vehicle thefts (table 5.04) and violent crime (6.02). Figures are broken down into categories which include household income, employment status and area type. More detailed analysis of the risks of burglary, based on the 1998 BCS, was published in 1999. This analysis did not show an independent link between risk of burglary victimisation and household income. The BCS 2001–02 also published risks by types of neighbourhood. This showed that people living in the more deprived 'striving areas' tended to experience higher risks generally, although there was also an increased risk in 'rising areas', such as affluent urban areas.

In terms of offending, poverty has been identified as one of the potential risk factors associated with offending. For example, a study of working class boys found that a combination of low income, poor housing and large family size consistently identified an increased

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risk of self-reported offending, criminal convictions and both juvenile and adult offending (Farrington 1992b and 1992c).

The new English and Welsh Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (NEW-ADAM) research programme, which involves interviewing and drug testing adults arrested by the police, confirms a link between drug misuse and crime. Analysis on the links between crime, family background and drug use is published in the 1998–99 Youth Lifestyles Survey. This examined the extent to which various factors were associated with offending among young people aged 12 to 30. Figures show, for example, that young people who lived in a lone parent or a step parent family were more likely to be serious or persistent offenders than those who lived with their natural parents. However, persistent, serious conflict between parents, or between a parent and a child, appears to be more important, in this respect, than family structure. While some structures—notably lone parent families—are correlated with an increased risk that children will offend, the evidence suggests that this is a product of factors that also affect children in two-parent families. Drug users were also more likely to be serious or persistent offenders than non-drug users.

In the spring we intend to publish a series of reports on the relationship between binge-drinking by young people and offending. Work is also being undertaken on a literature review on the relationship between alcohol and violence.

Crime Statistics (Hertfordshire)

Mr. Clappison: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will give a breakdown of crime statistics for (a) Hertsmere and (b) Hertfordshire for each year since 1997, including the most recent figures available. [96948]

Mr. Denham: The number of offences recorded in the Hertsmere Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership (CDRP), and the Hertfordshire police force area for the years requested are given in the table.

Currently, six key offence groups are recorded and published at Crime and Disorder Partnership level. Data have been collected at this level since 1 April 1999. All main offence groups are collected at police force area level.

There was a change in counting rules for recorded crime on 1 April 1998, which would have the tendency to increase the number of offences counted. Numbers of offences before and after this date are therefore not directly comparable.

Table A—Number of recorded offences in Hertsmere Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership.

	Violence against the person	Sexual offences	Robbery	Burglary in a dwelling	Theft of a motor vehicle	Theft from a vehicle
1999–2000(11)	1,000	60	49	480	325	1,305
2001–01	453	33	52	512	303	1.223
2001–02	303	22	77	544	395	1,135

⁽¹¹⁾ Parts of this area were policed by the Metropolitan Police until 1 April 2000, when responsibility for policing was transferred to Hertfordshire Constabulary.

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Table B—Number of offences recorded by Hertfordshire Constabulary, from 1997 to 2001/02, by offence group

Year	Total	Violence against the person	Sexual offences	Robbery	Burglary	Theft and handling stolen goods	Fraud and Forgery	Criminal damage	Drug and other offences
1997 (12)	50,050	2,311	290	289	9,345	26,200	1,345	9,831	(14)439
1998–99 (13)	49,309	3,313	321	250	8,353	22,935	2,312	10,177	1,648
1999–00 (13),(15)	52,741	3,703	348	420	8,689	23,358	2,935	11,560	1,728
2000–01	64,215	4,485	397	508	9,945	28,987	3,982	13,839	2,072
2001–02	67,437	4,713	381	683	10,682	30,213	3,475	15,323	1,967

⁽¹²⁾ Recorded on a calendar year basis.

⁽¹³⁾ The number of crimes recorded in that financial year using the expanded offence coverage and revised counting rules which came into effect on 1 April 1998.

⁽¹⁴⁾ Before 1 April 1998 the only drug offence recorded was "trafficking".

⁽¹⁵⁾ Parts of this area were policed by the Metropolitan Police until 1 April 2000, when responsibility for policing was transferred to Hertfordshire Constabulary. The figures given for this year are based on the 'Old boundaries'.

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