Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-179)
3 NOVEMBER 2004
Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom, and Inspector
Paul Firth
Q160 Albert Owen: You are clear there
are tensions but you do not think there is a big conflict between
you. Are the targets that are set nationally all applicable to
your Force and do you spend some time, if you like, wasting time
on going to briefings, the things that do not apply in the Home
Office or other areas that do not apply to you?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: Personally
no. We all have more work to do than we can handle, but that is
going to be the case if you tripled or quadrupled my budget for
my staff we would still say the same thing, the same would be
for the other public profession. I am entirely content with the
content of the Government strategic agenda and the national policing
plan and the priorities that go with that. They cause me as Chief
Constable of North Wales no concern whatsoever, but of course
they only deal with the national agenda. Equally, important at
least is the local agenda, which is entirely within the remit
of the North Wales Police Authority through their policing plan
and me as their chief officer. I really do not see any difficulty
with that at all.
Q161 Albert Owen: Most public service
bodies I presume as the police had to collect a lot of data for
various agencies. How does this affect the actual performance
of the Force and how much time and cost is needed to provide this
to the appropriate departments?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: Perhaps
if I take that as a headquarters level and Paul could tell you
what it means on the street, as it were. We spend approximately
a quarter of a million pounds a year on collecting management
information and producing it and circulating it. It is out of
our budget of, in round terms, £100 million, so it is a quarter
of a percentage of our budget. It is absolutely vital, vital that
we do that. It is not something we have been doing in the past.
Since I have been in North Wales we are spending significantly
more money collecting and using management information. It is
vital because I think policing for most of my career has been
pretending that we are some arcane science, an art I should say,
a craft rather than a profession. It has not done us any favours
at all. We have not been able to prove what we do with our time,
what we do with our money, what success looks like. We have needed
to get our act together. We have had a significant jolt nationally
and we have responded to it. I could not do my job now, and I
am sure Paul will tell you the same at his level, without access
to timely, accurate, relevant up-to-date, well-presented,
user-friendly management information because we have to be able
to demonstrate that we are on top of our job and that we know
what works. It is absolutely vital.
Q162 Albert Owen: One final comment really,
and before do I would like to put on record my thanks to the North
Wales Police who have been working with the local community for
the dispersal order in Holyhead was the first in Wales and moreover
the extension of that time limit because it is working. I am seeing
it working and I think for the record it should be said that many
parents of young children welcome it as well as do elderly people
in the local community. My question is, you mentioned you now
have your act together. Therefore, are you happy with the performance
of North Wales Police and what were the shortcomings before?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: In
terms of our position as I speak today, I am happy, extremely
happy in fact with the performance of North Wales Police, indeed
I am proud of it. I am not content with it, however. Crime is
only down just over 11% this year. I would rather it was down
25% and so would you I am sure. I am very pleased it is down 10%.
This is a real decline. I take account of British crime survey
results and the differences between recorded crime and the surveys.
This is a real decline in crime. Anti-social behaviour is down.
Our detection rate is up to one of the very highest in England
and Wales now. It has not stopped climbing. There is more good
news to come, but I am most certainly not content. This is not
as good as it gets. It is a blooming sight better than it has
ever been in my life before, but that is not enough. We still
live in a society where there is too much crime, too much disorder.
Quality of life is not as high as it could and should be. We must
never be complacent nor content, in my view, but at the same time
I am extremely proud of what we have achieved.
Q163 Albert Owen: I need to push you
on this. You say you needed a jolt from, if you like, the Home
Office or at national level, so what were the shortcomings and
why did you need that jolt?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: I think
we have needed to or the Government has needed to gets its act
together, governance I should say. I am not talking just about
the current one. I think that has happened.
Q164 Albert Owen: I am talking about
the Force, with respect.
Chief Constable Brunstrom: Thank
you, but it is part of the same circular loop, so there had to
be a clear indication of what we were expecting to achieve before
we could go and achieve it. We have had a sharp knock and we have
needed it and part of it has been subjecting the police to a more
obvious performance regime at national level, led in large measure
by The Treasury saying, "You are not getting any more money
until you can", in crude colloquial terms, "until you
can prove that you are worth it". I think we have had to
learn that lesson at national and local level. In terms of where
we are not so good, our culture is changing rapidly. I do not
think community policing or reassurance policing is yet fully
embedded in all our staff. It is growing rapidly but it is not
secure yet. I cannot take my eye off the ball for a moment. We
still have lots and lots of detailed work to do. Our relationship
with the County Councils is very, very much better than it was,
but there is a lot of work to do there to get full benefit from
this. There are lots and lots of things—I could talk all
morning, sir, on things which I wish we could do better—but
I use that as a reason for optimism. We are already doing good
work and we have an agenda as long as your arm on things that
we need to do next to get even better. I am extremely optimistic
that we can turn out significantly better work across the whole
of the foreseeable future.
Q165 Albert Owen: At this moment I share
your optimism. The point I was making is: whilst I acknowledge
the huge improvements that you have made as a Force what I am
really after is why comparatively with the rest of the Police
Authorities and police areas in Wales in particular you are so
far behind on certain issues?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: I do
not agree at all that we were behind.
Q166 Albert Owen: These are the Home
Office statistics on detection rates?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: You
are leading me into a very complicated area on the Home Office
statistics. Suffice it to say that I do not agree that we were
behind, and if you would like to look at the most recent statistics
you will see that we are significantly ahead.
Q167 Albert Owen: I am acknowledging
that.
Chief Constable Brunstrom: I do
not agree that we were behind in the first place, and that has
been part of the problem that there has not been an agreed method
of measuring police performance ever that is comparable across
police boundaries. That has held back the development of policing
at Government level and professionally within the service but
it is now being fixed. I think we can look at the future with
a great deal more confidence in terms of being able to compare
and contrast one policing area with another. Nationally, within
Wales and locally right down to Paul's area and even within Paul's
area because we need to find out what works, who is working and
why. I did not get a chance to bring Paul Firth in to answer part
of Mr Owen's question about how we manage performance locally.
It really is very important because policing is a people business.
We do not make widgets.
Q168 Albert Owen: What I was trying to
say is: is the national target at a local level, I think you answered
that.
Inspector Firth: I am quite happy
to answer that. From my perspective the introduction of, we have
always had statistics, but we now have statistics we can use because
they are meaningful and they are timely. I am in a position now
where I can review what I am doing and what my staff are doing
on a regular basis. We can use that to good effect when we are
talking to our staff, when we are setting targets for them and
we are giving them a direction. I want the staff to be going out
with a focus. We can use the statistics to provide us with that.
What we are also looking at is how we provide a meaningful performance
measurement for our Community Beat Managers; that is one area
where I am particularly focused on making an impact. We have introduced
a performance review mechanism for our Community Beat Managers
which as well as looking at all of the general statistics it looks
at the actual impact they are making within and together with
their partners. The actual information is coming down to us now.
I have reviewed approximately every 8 weeks, 6 to 8 weeks with
my divisional commander. We go through the entire region of Wrexham
South, the district of Wrexham South. Then I use that information
as well to relay back to my sergeant and to my constables. What
it provides us with is, as I say, a clear focus on what we expect
our officers to deliver; that is something that we have not been
able to do effectively in the past. What I would also say though
is that beyond that we need to take cognisance of what the community
are telling us. I need to be able to reflect what is happening
locally. I need to be able to target my officers on what is happening
locally. That is not always captured by pure statistics. You need
to have a personal contact and that is now bearing fruit that
we have been able to target local issues that do not always manifest
themselves in statistics.
Q169 Albert Owen: Just a simple question:
you do not think the national targets are taking your eye off
the ball?
Inspector Firth: No, not locally
at all.
Q170 Mrs Williams: Could I declare an
interest at the start of my questioning session in that my eldest
son is a serving officer with the North Wales Police and I would
like that recorded please. I would like now to turn to tackling
anti-social behaviour and reducing volume crime. I am very familiar
of course with your Dyna Ddigon project, but can I ask you to
tell the Committee a little bit more about Dyna Ddigon and could
you also tell us what proportion of the Force's resources are
allocated to Dyna Ddigon and are there any issues that are marginalised,
under- resourced perhaps as a result of the money put into Dyna
Ddigon?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: We
were very early in the field amongst police forces in England
and Wales in thinking seriously how we were going to tackle anti-social
behaviour. We could see a Government campaign coming. We could
read the writing on the wall, but we recognised we needed to respond
to this independently but we needed to respond to it. We came
up with this Dyna Ddigon concept to try and look at, given that
we are going to be given significant powers, what are we going
to do to respond to that? What does it mean us locally? It is
okay having all this statute but if we do not use it it does not
achieve anything. We looked around the world because we want to
be working at the cutting edge of world policing. One of the big
things that had been operating in the United States was a concept
of zero tolerance. We thought that was inappropriate in Wales.
We do not think it has been enormously successful in The States
where it has been tried because you need a more rounded approach
to this. we wanted a more philosophical, a more thought provoking,
more supportive, constructive approach, rather than just cracking
down the law, which is what zero tolerance implies. On the other
hand, we did not want to be do-gooders. The law does need to be
enforced. We need to protect the 95-99% of decent law abiding
people in this society who are being subjected to an appalling
quality of life by a small handful who refuse to behave. That
hard edge is necessary, but we wanted to set it within a much
more thought-provoking context. We came up with the idea of Dyna
Ddigon which probably means more to a Welsh speaker than it does
to a native English speaker like me. It is the sort of thing that
a Welsh speaking parent would say to his or her young teenage
child: "pack it in, stop it, that's enough", a sort
of fairly gentle parental reminder that this sort of behaviour
is not acceptable and if you do not stop there will be consequences.
We have tried to encapsulate something in the Welsh concept that
meant a little bit more than "the law is the law and if you
do not behave, sonny, you will be in trouble with me". We
wanted something much cleverer than that but something also that
we could sell within our own organisation and to society generally.
I think it is been a spectacular success so far. We deliberately
started small and we chose some particular locations, some of
our most difficult locations in North Wales, 3 initially, to try
the concept out, to try and galvanise local society to recognise
distaste for the yob culture. Yes, to enforce the law, but also
at the other end of that scale to do something to invest in young
people. A crucial part of the dispersal order that you mentioned,
Mr Owen, of course is it is not just there is a dispersal order
that says "You will not", but society has to provide
alternative things for young people to do so that there is not
just a "You will not congregate in this area", but,
"you do not have to congregate in this area because society
has produced these facilities for you so that there is something
else for you to do. There is no excuse for you to misbehave."
That is vital. There is the zero tolerance approach which is saying
"you will not congregate in this area, if you disagree with
that you will be arrested". The Dyna Ddigon concept is much
cleverer than that. Distaste for the yob culture and investing
in protecting young people. Do not forget that young people are
victimised more than adults are. They are a particularly vulnerable
group in society in the first place. Also another limb to this
was to try and recover civic pride. I think it is a phrase which
had almost gone out of use in the English language and certainly
had done in civic society; an idea of smartening up the environment,
being proud of our communities, being proud of our town centres.
Not cutting back on the refuse collections as local authorities
have been doing for the last 20 years, but recognising that the
refuse needs to be collected because we ought to be proud of our
town centres. In doing that, this is perhaps where part of a dispersal
order comes back in again, making public open spaces welcoming
rather than threatening. All that could not be adequately encapsulated
in zero tolerance but could we thought in this Dyna Ddigon concept.
We tried it out for a year or so in three places. One that immediately
springs to mind was the Peblig Ward of Caernarfon which is a very
disadvantaged council estate. The early results were extremely
encouraging. We do intend to make it comprehensive across the
whole of North Wales in every aspect of our business in the foreseeable
future. We have been determined to go at a step by step approach,
so we have kept with a site-based approach at the moment. As I
speak, we have 19 Dyna Ddigon sites across the whole of North
Wales. In 17 of them at the moment there are significant and I
think sustainable decreases in crime and anti-social behaviour.
Q171 Mrs Williams: What criteria do you
use to select these areas?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: They
have to be an area where there is an identifiable crime and disorder
problem. Identification has to be negotiated with and agreed by
the local authority and, if we can, the local population in some
detail. That has been, in itself, part of the success because,
as Paul will be able to tell you, none of this is worth anything
if we do not have buy in from the local population. If we are
not working on behalf of the population we are simply an army
of occupation; that is what not what we need to be. We have done
a very great deal to make sure that the things we are doing with
Dyna Ddigon is lined up with what local people want. I think the
most extreme example of this would be in a village called Pentrefoelas
in North Wales, which is a small village on the side of the A5,
one of our single carriageway trunk roads. I went to give a speech
in Pentrefoelas myself seven or eight months ago. The population
who turned up in the village hall—excuse me being anecdotal
but it is relevant to your question—they said, "This
is fascinating, Chief Constable, but what has it got to do with
us because we do not have a yob problem here. We do not have yobs
in this part of North Wales. We do not have a litter problem.
We do not have a vandalism problem. The problem we have is anti-social
use of the A5 road." I said: "That is fascinating because
there is no point in us bringing our Dyna Ddigon concept to your
village if it does not fit". We now have a Dyna Ddigon site
in Pentrovoilus(?) and the only target is anti-social use of the
road. We have local people there now trained up to use handheld
speed cameras at their own request instead of the police doing
it because it is their village. They are not prosecuting people,
but sending warning letters to drivers saying, "You have
been caught speeding through our village. Please do not do it
any more". We have the Welsh Assembly Government looking
at road signing and constriction markings to create a nicer environment
with the backing of the county council, the community council,
the local population, the Welsh Assembly Government and the police,
a very extreme example of this Dyna Ddigon concept. The other
extreme I think would be Conwy or Wrexham town centre. Conwy is
probably a very good example, and in your constituency so you
will know it extremely well. Conwy is a world heritage site. It
has the best preserved town walls in the United Kingdom. It is
tiny. It ought to be the easiest place in Britain to police, but
we have not succeeded. I think I have received more complaints
about the policing of Conwy in the time I have been in North Wales
than anywhere else in North Wales, but sometimes more than all
North Wales put together. The town was being run by a small group
of about 20 people, most of who are under the age of 15 who were
just running riot and we had not gripped it. We had not dealt
with it. Now it is a Dyna Ddigon site, the problem has more or
less gone away. We have had more than a 50% decrease in crime
and disorder in Conwy simply by applying the dispersal order,
thinking it through, talking to the Chamber of Trade, the local
people, the local council. It is just fabulous. There is no end
to the good news that comes from this once we get our act together.
Q172 Mrs Williams: I think you said twice
it has been a success. What data do you have you have to prove
this?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: In
the Police Service nationally we have very good data on things
regarded as Home Office crimes. We have been keeping crime records
in this country for about 200 years. We have some very very sophisticated
crime information. Unfortunately, it has rather been serendipity
as to what particular offence is regarded as a crime and what
is not. I think probably the most ridiculous example is drawing
a trailer on a tractor with a solid tow bar is a Home Office crime
which does not seem to have a great deal of logic to me, and yet
anti-social behaviour is not. Because anti-social behaviour is
a new priority in our society, and it is a society issue, not
just a Government and police issue, we do not yet have sophisticated
data capture methods for anti-social behaviour. They are in development
at the moment. There will very shortly be a thing called the National
Standard for Incident Recording, known as NSIR in Home Office
and police circles for short, and it is intended that that will
start on 1st April next year. That will, for the first time ever,
capture anti-social behaviour data in a consistent fashion across
Britain. My answer to your question, of course, is in the monthly
information bulletin, which is part of what we spend our quarter
of a million pounds on, our monthly bulletin. You will see set
out in there for each of our Dyna Ddigon sites grants on anti-social
incidents that we have recorded for each of these sites, quite
meticulously because we have put effort into capturing that. If
you want to know how that happens Paul can tell you the detail,
but this is more or less unique to North Wales because at the
moment there is not a consistent national method of defining these
incidents in capturing the data, what is desperately needed, the
good thing it is coming over the horizon, so very shortly we will
be in a much stronger position. we in North Wales have very detailed
and comprehensive records of anti-social behaviour.
Q173 Mrs Williams: In your report you
mentioned a range of methods available for tackling anti-social
behaviour, page 51 to 71 I think?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: Yes.
Q174 Mrs Williams: You talk about ASBOs
and you also talk about a yellow card system.
Chief Constable Brunstrom: Yes.
Q175 Mrs Williams: Can you provide any
information and concrete examples on the comparative effectiveness
of these tools in tackling anti-social behaviour?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: I can,
and again I encourage Members to speak to Paul Firth about this
because he is doing some of this work for real. Anti-social behaviour
orders are an enormously effective tool if properly applied. They
have not taken off anything like as quickly as we would wish and
there are a number of reasons for that and there are still severe
difficulties with them, most particularly in the way that the
courts approach them, the courts and the legal system I should
say. I think it will be fair to say that the police have been
nationally and locally slow out of the traps to take advantage
of the concept of an anti-social behaviour order; a very new idea
in the Crime and Disorder Act several years old now. It is still
the case across Britain and in North Wales that many local authorities
have not yet started and we have some good examples of this sort
of thing in North Wales and some fairly poor examples. We have
in North Wales at the moment 53 anti-social behaviour orders.
We had a total of 56 taken out. 3 have expired as they should
do over time, so we have 53 live ones at the moment. Almost all
of those have been initiated by the police, almost without exception.
Increasingly nowadays they are our done with the support of the
local authorities, but if I contrast this with the situation in
Manchester where there have been I think in excess of 500 taken
out by Manchester City Council alone, there is a significant difference
in philosophy between the Manchester Council approach and the
councils in North Wales. I do not say that that is right or wrong,
by the way, because there is a very interesting debate as to whether
more anti-social behaviour orders is a good idea. We have gone
down a route of trying to target them where they are most needed
and to try and divert people away from that formal sanction. We
have a whole series of filters in place which I show in my evidence
to try and avoid the need for an anti-social behaviour order.
There is still a lack of engagement I think. I will come to the
yellow card scheme in a moment if I may. We still have a serious
problem in our courts. The Government has had to legislate more
than once to try and correct this. There is reluctance in the
Court Service at every level I think to engage in this. The lawyers
are having a field day. We are regularly now having anti-social
behaviours orders that take two or three days of court time: two
or three days. We had one booked recently where it was 4 days.
They were expected to be over in an hour. There really is a need
to have a slicker court process and I fear the Government is going
to have to legislate again to make it extremely clear to the courts
that they are expected to change their behaviour in the way that
I have been expected to change mine. The yellow card scheme—I
should say by the way we have had a number of breaches. I think
if memory serves, we have had about 23 breaches of formal anti-social
behaviour orders that have been formally investigated so far.
You would have to expect that, of course, because we are making
orders against people who lead chaotic lives and are not used
to having their behaviour constrained, so you would have to expect
that some breaches would take place. It would also be fair to
say that we have attempted to make some quite naive orders, that
we have attempted to have things put in place that just are not
going to work. We are putting a control upon somebody that is
evident before we start is not going to be effective and, therefore,
a breach is inevitable. I think there is a learning cycle there
for us too to make this more sophisticated. Overall, and Paul
can I know give you some specific examples, properly managed these
things work. There is a risk that we end up concentrating not
on solving the problem—and we are very big in problem solving
in North Wales which is a new concept in policing—there
is a risk with this that we just concentrate on trying to control
the offender rather than solve the problem. Many of these problems
surround the use of public space. I could give you a theoretical
example. Paul could give you a real one. It is commonplace to
have people kick a ball around on a public space and there is
often a thing through from the Council saying "Ball games
not permitted in this space" and you then find somebody that
gets an anti-social behaviour order made against them for alleged
anti-social behaviour. The actual problem was: why is there not
a public space available to kick a football around on? If we are
not careful we concentrate on the offence rather than saying:
can we solve this problem in the first place so that the offence
never takes place, which is something that is missing from the
thinking in the strategic level at the moment. The yellow card
scheme is an idea that we borrowed from football because we wanted
something that made sense to young people. Personally I hate and
detest football; I have spent half of my career being paid to
police it, so I do not have any interest in this at all myself,
but everybody knows that if the referee waves a yellow card at
you then you have to change your behaviour or you are off the
pitch. Everybody knows, even I know that. Our yellow card scheme
is an idea to demonstrate with a bit of a flourish, a bit of showmanship,
a bit of humour to a misbehaving person of any age: this is a
yellow card and all your friends can see you are getting one and
so can everyone else.
Q176 Mrs Williams: Is it working?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: It
is. Let me come back to that in a second. To say, look, this is
not serious yet but stop now or else. The impact that it has had
on people upon whom this has been used has been significant. We
cannot say yet how well it is working because the scheme is new.
We have only given hundreds of these things out, but the immediate
impact on a person who is misbehaving is stark. It is there to
see. This whole thing, because it is so bold and dynamic and done
with a little bit of humour to level it, it really does work very
well indeed. For the first time ever it is enabling us to keep
records so that we now have a record that you have had your warning
and if you come to our notice again you will not get a second
chance. We have never been able to do that before because we have
lacked the mechanism and the technology to do it. Chairman, perhaps
I have—sorry, I was going to say I have been talking at
enormous length. I really would like, if I may, to bring Paul
Firth in because I think it is okay hearing from me. I polish
a desk at headquarters. Paul walks the streets and does this for
real. I think it would be really helpful for the Committee to
see how this whole new concept of Government strategy works on
the street.
Chairman: Absolutely. That is why we
wanted Paul along because I know the work he is doing in my constituency.
Can I say we are running massively over time. If we can be a little
bit more succinct with our answers, Chief.
Q177 Mrs Williams: Can I ask Inspector
Firth if he can link into his answer, give us concrete examples
of best practice?
Inspector Firth: Particularly
with the Dyna Ddigon site and the anti-social behaviour in those
areas, we have one site, a village Chirk which is on the border
with England towards West Mercier site and it was identified as
a consequence of the crime and disorder audit and we have worked
with partners to look at incidents of disorder in the area. We
have used anti-social behaviour orders. We currently have two
in that area and one in a local area close by. We also use acceptable
behaviour contracts which is a precursor to an anti-social behaviour
order which is basically an agreement between various parties
that a set line of behaviour will be adhered to, otherwise there
is a potential to, at the very most, will be to consider an eviction
because these are run by ourselves and housing. We have used a
range of options within the Chirk area. In particular, I would
highlight that the biggest problem that we had in that one location
in Chirk itself was a combined multi-use facility, which was the
primary school youth club and leisure centre. This site had been
the subject of two or three incidents of disorder every single
night. We worked I think over two years ago to identify the key
problems behind this generating of police response on a regular
nightly basis. As the Chief alluded to there, we talked about
the problem with the location itself, the victims who were being
impacted upon by the public and also the offenders. It was as
a consequence of that work that led to the first anti-social behaviour
I think in Wales for the youth in Chirk itself. Unfortunately,
although the offender was dealt with and his colleagues as a problem
the actual location itself, because we dealt with the offenders,
the symptoms went away and we did not do anything. The other agencies
that were working with us did nothing about the location itself,
so 18 months later the same problem started to manifest themselves
all over again. We were then faced with having to readdress the
whole problem. We had breaches. We breached the youth and as a
consequence of that breach he was put in detention initially.
He was taken away from his home. I think he got some notoriety
on a Channel 4 programme because he was the first in Wales. It
really was impactive. However, since that particular problem occurred,
since that breach, he has subsequently been breached on two or
three other occasions which have not led to any kind of detention;
it has been community orders and such. The Chief alluded to the
issues about the courts because the local council have considered
what they can do about that as an issue. That is something the
courts need to perhaps look at. It is losing confidence, the local
public are losing confidence in the breaching process. That is
a message that has come back to me strongly from the council.
What we did do to redress it, and we talked about problem solving
and local work together, we reassessed the problem of the multi-functional
site, the leisure centre, and pulled together a public meeting.
We had some fairly senior members of the local county borough
council to come along to that meeting and to look at the real
problem, which were not the symptoms of the anti-social behaviour.
It was the location itself that was generating it. As a consequence
of that and the work gone on now, there has been a huge investment
by the county borough, education, leisure and various others to
improve the site. There is CCTV, a different construction to the
centre, there is better management from the youth service; there
is as a whole range of options. As a consequence, we have gone
from having two or three calls per night to not a single call
in about four months now, which has had an absolutely massive
impact on that particular site. Can I say that given my wife is
a receptionist there it has saved me a lot of earache at home
as well. It has been a massive support for us. It has been really
evidenced not just how we can use anti-social behaviour orders
to target offenders, but the fact that we need to have local council
and local partnership support in dealing with location and victim
issues. That is a particular issue that we have raised not just
in Chirk but in other council areas as well and I have challenged
at the county council's meeting and the council town and communities
that I visit, each of the local areas to put together a strategy
for young people. The local town and community councils do not
have in general terms a strategy to deal with young people at
all. As a consequence, the dispersal orders, and such as that,
I am very limited in being able to achieve dispersal orders where
I need them because there are no other options. There is nowhere
else we can send the kids to, so we have to get that part of it
right. That is crucial. When we talk about anti-social behave
orders they do work. I am confident, I have seen the benefits
of them working, but they are not the answer in themselves. We
have to look at a broader brush approach and that partnership,
again, that we talked about before.
Chairman: Can I just say at this juncture
it looks as though we are getting very useful information from
you, so we do not want to curtail the debate. I want to finish
at 11.30 because it is Welsh Questions today unfortunately or
fortunately. What I am thinking a possibility would be that if
we adjourned until our visit to North Wales and then continue
to take formal evidence from you in North Wales; if you could
think about that as a possibility that would be quite good, in
which case we will not have to rush the questions. I think we
are getting a lot of useful work done now. Perhaps if we can carry
on on that basis. I intend to adjourn at 11.30.
Q178 Albert Owen: If I could just go
back to something which Mr Brunstrom said with regard to the courts
in your opinion blocking the system, if you like. Are you serious
about having to bring in legislation or do you think with greater
education that the courts will catch up with the police and some
local authorities who have been slow in understanding the concept
of ASBOs and their effect on society?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: I think
the Government has already had to legislate twice. The original
legislation said that the standard of evidence required for an
ASBO will be the civil standard of proof, which is the balance
of probabilities: it is more likely than not. The courts have
for some time tried to say this must be done to a criminal standard
of proof. The Government had to re-legislate to make it extremely
plain that the civil standard of proof was expected. We still
end up, I think because of the structure of our legal system,
with this adversarial system. It has become a lawyer's field day
because we are trying to affect people's lives in a very interventionist
sense and some people are bound to contest this. I do think there
is going to have to be further thought given by the Government
with the Department of Constitutional affairs as to how this process
is intended to work in court. It might be that we simply have
to put it up with it, that we are on libertarian grounds putting
significant constraints on people's lives and it is right and
proper that it be debated in court at length. You could argue
that that is better justice, but it is not what was originally
intended. The Government intended this to be a quick, simple and
cheap process and it is not turning into that. I think the Government
will have to consider further legislation. It will certainly have
to consider some sort of programme to affect the culture of the
judiciary: magistrates and district judges and Crown Court judges.
It simply has not changed and we are not getting the process that
we were expecting.
Q179 Albert Owen: Legislation or guidelines
to the magistrates?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: One
or other I think is going to have to happen if the Government
is not content with what it sees happening in courts and there
is lots of evidence as to what is happening in courts.
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