Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
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7 MAY 2008
Q40 Keith Hill: Does Mr King then?
Sir David Normington: No, he does
not direct the police either. We have sat down recently with the
people who are running Operation Trident to talk about some of
these issues, and I know that is their view. I will certainly
pass that on to the Commissioner.
Q41 Keith Hill: I am very grateful.
May I finally raise one other issue of local concern; that is,
a certain anxiety that in some of these London boroughs there
will be so many people released under the early release scheme
that it will undermine the focus on anti-gang activity. Are you
aware of this and are you doing anything about it?
Sir David Normington: I am aware
of the anxiety. I am also aware that there is very serious risk
assessment of the people who are being released, in order that
we are not releasing early, people who will go straight back into
their gangs. We are also trying to ensure with serious offenders
that, when they do get back into their communities, there is a
continued management and monitoring of them, and that they cannot
just go back. I think that is some assurance, therefore.
Q42 Mr Curry: Sir David, you referred
to the international comparison on page 36. Whatever we do, we
always tend to find out that the Scandinavians do it better. If
we look at hospital infection, the Scandinavians are right at
the bottom—in terms of degree of infection. Here they are,
at the bottom of the table again. What do they do? Is it because
their society is different? If it is different, in what way is
it different? Is it because they do things better, or are their
police more intelligent, or their government more perceptive?
Why is it that they always tend to be down there? What can we
learn?
Sir David Normington: I do not
know the answer to this. I can speculate with you that this is
about the nature of those societies, but I do not know. They are
always at the top of the league tables on education; they are
always at the bottom of the league tables on things like this.
I suspect that there is a connection between those things, in
terms of communities which are more supportive of people when
they are growing up; families that are more supportive. I do not
know. It is all generalisation. I would just say that, if you
take Appendix Four, the good news is that England and Wales has
been moving in the right direction; so, although those are out-of-date
figures, the footnote points out that we are now down to 1.4 per
100,000.
Q43 Mr Curry: Could one of the reasons
be that they are much more decentralised societies than Britain,
with hugely greater powers to local government and local communities,
and that the central government does not think that it can solve
problems in the way we do? Might ownership of problems at the
local level be something to do with it?
Sir David Normington: It could
be. Of course, a lot of this report is about how you ensure that
local partners and people take greater responsibility and have
the support to do that.
Q44 Mr Curry: That is different.
It is not the same thing.
Sir David Normington: But things
like putting the local authority money now on a three-year basis,
not ring-fencing it and giving them the ability—I may not
persuade you, but I think that is a move in the right direction.
Q45 Mr Curry: We are having a sort
of constitutional almsgiving when we give things to local communities;
we do not embed the power in the local communities, which is what
happens in some of the other societies. We can discuss that, perhaps
not now.
Sir David Normington: I certainly
think that the most successful law enforcement comes when the
community is taking responsibility for itself and supporting law
enforcement.
Q46 Mr Curry: To follow what Mr Hill
has been discussing—and my constituency across the Yorkshire
Dales is probably as far away from his as it could conceivably
be—if you take the black-on-black violence which we see
as being a problem in London and if we related that to people
who leave school without three, what are referred to rather optimistically
as "good GCSEs", what sort of correlation would we find?
In today's papers we saw some figures relating to truancy. It
is something like 40,000 kids per week are missing at least two
days. I speak from having just seen the sketch of a headline.
What sort of correlation is there? And that is correlated again
to a breakdown of family relationship; perhaps no family there
in the first place to have a relationship. What sort of correlations
do we discover?
Sir David Normington: We would
find that those young people who were most likely to commit crimes,
particularly serious crimes, were those who came from families
that were in one way or another broken; children who had not had
regular attendance at school and had truanted or been excluded.
This is all part of a pattern, which is why some of what you have
to do is to go back down the chain and—
Q47 Mr Curry: That is what I wanted
to ask. You have referred to your previous incarnation. What is
being done to identify at an early stage kids who are regularly
not in class, who are unlikely to get a single GCSE at "G"
grade, or however far down the scale these things go, and to try
to mentor them from the start to stay in school, to get some qualifications
to be able to get some sort of employment? If you do that, presumably
the alternative magnet of the gang which gives some sort of identity
is less appealing.
Sir David Normington: Yes, and
it is essential. I have appeared before this Committee on exclusions
and tackling exclusions a few years ago, and I think that since
then there is much greater support for children who are dropping
out, missing lessons, and insistence that they go back; intensive
support in schools; special classes to help them get back into
the curriculum, and so on. The trouble is that some of that intervention
needs to be even earlier. Some of that is happening almost before
young people come into school. The state cannot replace all the
things that are going wrong in people's lives in terms of family
background and so on, but it can try.
Q48 Mr Curry: To what extent can
the police identify a propensity in certain families to commit
crime and to be involved in this? We know that one of the strategies
of the police is to identify families where there may be criminal
problems, and focus on them. To what extent can you do a socio-economic
profile, as it were, and look in advance at families which may
have a propensity to fall into this sort of activity?
Sir David Normington: Some of
that is done, but you have to be extremely careful about branding
children as though they are going to be the criminals of the future.
The police and others can look for the most vulnerable families
and do, and this is again where you need the local social services,
the children's services, the school, and so on; but you have to
be extremely cautious about it.
Q49 Mr Curry: They are not as badly
branded as they would be if they ended up in jail, are they?
Sir David Normington: That is
true, but you have to get the balance right, do you not, between
assuming that this child is going to become a criminal long before
they have become one?
Q50 Mr Curry: Tell me about girl
gangs. There has been a lot of publicity about girl gangs recently
on the Today programme, which we all listen to reverently
of course, about drink. Girls being arrested for drink regard
it as a badge of pride to be arrested, of course. You have not
had a good night out unless you have been arrested, according
to some of them. Is that an increasing problem? Are "ladettes"
becoming more like the lads? Is there a different way of getting
hold of that at an early stage?
Sir David Normington: I do not
think that they are gangs in quite the same way. Binge drinking
by girls is on the increase, but I do not think that is the same
as having violent crime related to girl gangs.
Q51 Mr Curry: No, but the girls who
get into that might end up as the girlfriends of the blokes doing
the violent crime.
Sir David Normington: They might
do that, yes. I do not really think that girl gangs are the issue
we are really dealing with. I think that there is some evidence—
Q52 Mr Curry: Criminality by girls
is, is it not? That appears to be on the increase.
Sir David Normington: Partly,
I think, because binge drinking is on the increase. We have a
situation with alcohol that the numbers of young teenagers drinking
is falling, but those who are drinking are drinking a great deal
more; so the binge drinking problem is considerable.
Q53 Mr Curry: It is a British sort
of phenomenon, is it not? Germans do it occasionally when they
have got a football match on but, by and large, foreigners come
to Britain and note it as one of the peculiar British ailments.
Sir David Normington: I think
that there is more binge drinking here, yes.
Q54 Mr Curry: Tell me about PCTs.
There is a section here about relations with PCTs. Anybody who
has visited an A&E department at a big hospital on a Saturday
night about midnight knows what is swept up in there. What can
be done to improve the relationship between—we are not actually
talking about PCTs, we are talking about hospitals on the ground—and
people working to prevent crime, or just to make sure that if
people do end up there, wounded, the police are there pretty damned
quick to find out all about it? It does not seem to be as effective
as it ought to be, does it, from this?
Sir David Normington: In truth,
wherever you go around the country you are most likely to hear
that the people who are not actively engaged in the partnership
are the PCT or the local hospital. That, of course, is because
they have got a lot of things to do, and we should understand
that. What we have been doing, as I was saying earlier, is showing
them how easy it can be to collect the data and give it to somebody
to analyse, and also to show them what benefits there are to them
from reducing violent crime.
Q55 Mr Curry: So what are the three
easy steps, as it were? If you were going to do the idiot's guide
to PCTs "without hesitation, deviation or repetition",
give us a minute on it.
Sir David Normington: On what
PCTs should be doing?
Q56 Mr Curry: Yes.
Sir David Normington: What we
need is PCTs to collect data about wounding, to hand it to the
police, and to turn up—
Q57 Mr Curry: How much later than
when the wounded person turns up?
Sir David Normington: I am very
happy for it to be done afterwards.
Q58 Mr Curry: Instantaneously.
Sir David Normington: But there
is some evidence—I think there is some Scottish evidence—of
people having a free-phone, where they just phone up and give
it, just send a recorded message, "We have somebody here.
These are the characteristics of it". Obviously it is better
if it is done when the person is in front of you because you know
what it is all about, but as long as it is collected I am happy
for that to happen. Then what we need is for them all to come
together to analyse what is happening in that area. Because the
hospital knows what is happening on drinking; it knows what is
happening on wounding; it knows what is happening on violent offences.
It often has more real, up-to-date data about that to bring to
the party.
Q59 Mr Curry: On my very first question
when I was talking about overseas comparisons, you said you might
speculate on what the results might be. Anything that you had
which might give us firmer information, of practice which might
be taking place overseas which would be helpful to us, I am sure
that the Committee would be very interested in it.[2]
Sir David Normington: I will certainly
try to do that.
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