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1 Sep 2009 : Column 1872W—continued
Burglary Prevention
Mr. Hurd: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many burglary prevention advice packs are planned to be distributed; how they will be distributed; and what the timetable is for their distribution. [288846]
Mr. Alan Campbell: The Home Office is supplying 360,000 burglary advice packs. The contracted distributors, Prolog, are despatching them to members of the public who have ordered them via the dedicated public order telephone line, and to named contacts in all police forces in England and Wales which have requested the packs. All packs are due to be distributed to the police by the end of August 2009.
Children: Rights
Dr. Evan Harris: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether an assessment has been made of the compatibility of (a) antisocial behaviour orders, (b) curfews, (c) dispersal zones and (d) mosquito devices with children's rights to freedom of movement and peaceful assembly. [288124]
Mr. Alan Campbell: The Home Office has not carried out an assessment, however we have always made clear that tackling antisocial behaviour is not about intolerance of different lifestyles.
The freedom of assembly and association, found in Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, is a qualified right. This means that it may be subject to restrictions which are in accordance with the law, when such restrictions are necessary, and therefore proportionate, for the prevention of disorder or crime or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
Crime: Prevention
James Brokenshire: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department which projects have (a) been funded or (b) had funding allocated to them from the crime prevention budget in the 2009-10 financial year. [287919]
Mr. Alan Campbell: The Home Office does not have a single crime prevention budget. Funding through the Local Area Agreements and support for Crime and Disorder Partnerships, including police funding, all contributes to locally agreed work to prevent crime.
In addition to this, the Home Office funds projects and initiatives targeted at preventing crime through: offender-based interventions (to reduce recidivism); diversion and deterrence, especially around young people and those exposed to the problems of drug and alcohol misuse, antisocial behaviour, delinquency, chaotic families and poor parenting; support for victims, particularly victims of sexual or domestic violence (to reduce repeat victimisation and encourage the reporting of crime); improved local agency responses to antisocial behaviour and crime problems; and advice and practical measures of support for members of the public.
Funding goes towards national initiatives, support for police and other crime-reduction partners in the development and use of new techniques, tools and powers, and grants for third sector organisations for the
delivery of Home Office programmes or to support innovative approaches that contribute to crime reduction. In terms of national initiatives, programme and capital expenditure for 2009-10 has been planned for the following areas:
1. Preventing serious acquisitive crime, including the Safer Homes Action Against Burglary projects, the Vigilance Programme, and funding towards AVCIS (the ACPO Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service).
2. Tackling gang-related crime, and preventing gun and knife-related violence, including the Community Fund grant programme for voluntary and community sector organisations located in areas where gun and knife crime are a particular problem.
3. Tackling serious youth violence, including the Tackling Knives Action Programme.
4. Preventing the incidence of hate crime, including through the Government's Victims' Fund and the delivery of the hate crime action plan.
5. Supporting sexual and domestic violence victims, including funding for multi-agency risk assessment conferences, and the expansion of ISVA (independent sexual violence adviser) services and sexual assault referral centres.
6. Reducing violence against women, including the Together We Can End Violence against Women and Girls public consultation.
7. The Child Sex Offender Disclosure Pilots.
8. Preventing the incidence of other forms of inter-personal violence, including funding for the Forced Marriage Unit and a cross-Government co-ordinator on female genital mutilation.
Youth crime, antisocial behaviour, and community justice
9. Youth Crime Action Plan initiatives.
10. Youth Justice Board crime prevention initiatives.
11. Supporting members of the public and local agencies in dealing with antisocial behaviour, including the Antisocial Behaviour Action Squad.
12. Piloting a community justice panel.
13. Funding towards the UK National Wildlife Crime Unit.
14. Offender-based intervention, including the Prolific and other Priority Offenders programme, Drug Interventions Programme, and encouraging the take-up of Integrated Offender Management approaches.
15. The 2008 drug strategy delivery programme, including pilots to test new approaches to drug treatment and a national cannabis cultivation coordinator.
16. Named drug workers within youth offending teams.
17. Piloting family drug and alcohol courts.
18. Alcohol Arrest Referral pilots.
19. Improving alcohol law enforcement, including a programme of training and guidance for local practitioners.
20. The Positive Futures social inclusion programme for disadvantaged and socially marginalised young people.
21. Drugs licensing and compliance (issue of licences to companies and individuals within England, Wales and Scotland who wish to produce, supply, possess or import/export controlled drugs).
22. Grant funding support for crime third sector organisations, including the Crimestoppers Trust and the Neighbourhood Watch movement.
Crime: Suffolk
Mr. Spring: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many and what percentage of crimes committed in Suffolk resulted in (a) a caution, (b) a fixed penalty notice and (c) a conviction in each of the last five years. [286265]
Mr. Alan Campbell: Information is not available in the form requested as it is not possible to track individual offences through to their outcome at court. The available information relates to the number of offences recorded and detected by means of a caution or penalty notice for disorder in Suffolk in each financial year. Convictions data are based on the number of offenders and have been provided by the Office for Criminal Justice Reform. These data are published on a calendar year basis and are counts of persons classified by their principal offence.
For these reasons the two datasets are not directly comparable.
Table 1 gives the police recorded crime data for Suffolk. Table 2 provides data on the number of offenders convicted for all offences.
| Table 1: Offences recorded by the police in Suffolk | |||||
| Number of offences | Number detected by a caution | Percentage detected by a caution | Number detected by a penalty notice for disorder | Percentage detected by a penalty notice for disorder | |
| Table 2: Offenders convicted at all courts for all offences in Suffolk( 1, 2) | |
| Number of convictions | |
| (1) These data are on the principal offence basis. (2) Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. | |
Criminal Records Bureau
Tom Brake: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the longest time taken for the completion of a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) (a) standard and (b) enhanced disclosure check was in each year since the inception of the CRB. [283826]
Mr. Hanson: The performance of the CRB remains good and in 2008-09 the CRB exceeded its targets for issuing 90 per cent. of all standard checks within 10 days and issued 88 per cent of all Enhanced checks in 28 days. In 2008-09, the CRB witnessed an unprecedented increase in demand for its service which caused a dip below the 90 per cent. target for processing Enhanced checks in 28 days.
The disclosure process comprises broadly several stages involving the applicant, the registered body (RB) (the organisation that handles the application on behalf of an employer), the CRB and the police. Each stage is reliant on the accuracy of the data provided by the applicant and the subsequent verification of these data by the RB from the outset.
A number of factors can cause delays, including the length of time it can take for an employer to deal with the initial application; the accurate completion of the application form; the clarity of the information provided; the existence of conviction or non-conviction information and the operational effectiveness of the Disclosure Units of the police forces involved in the enhanced disclosure process following recent high volumes of applications.
The majority of applications spend between three and four days at the CRB and analysis undertaken by the Bureau has shown that the majority of delays that occur do so before the CRB receives an application and after it has been sent to the police.
The CRB has set up an improvement plan with its delivery partners, including the police forces, to address the problems associated with delays. This is aimed at maintaining a balanced output of applications on the system while also reducing the number of cases that have been in process for more than five days. This work has started to show an improvement in turnaround times but the CRB will continue to monitor forces' performance in line with its own performance.
Where applications are returned to customers to acquire further information, reminders are issued but some customers can fail to provide this information or withdraw their application from the Bureau's systems where they no longer require their disclosure.
The following table provides details of the longest time taken for the completion of a CRB standard and enhanced disclosure in each year since the inception of the Bureau. The figures have been calculated based on the date the disclosure was issued in each year, counting back from the date of completion.
| Longest time taken in days - enhanced disclosure | Longest time taken in days - standard disclosure | |
It is likely that these applications will have been referred back to the applicant or Registered Body; the delays in issue are not necessarily representative of the Bureau's performance.
Criminal Records Bureau
Mr. Evennett: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the average time taken to process an application for a Criminal Records Bureau disclosure was in the latest period for which figures are available. [288339]
Mr. Hanson: I refer the hon. Member to the answer of 29 June 2009, Official Report, columns 79-80W.
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