After boasting that the number of crimes was falling by six million each year, PM Brown announced an even bigger crack down on ‘crime’, with a poisonous attack on working class youth and their parents.
In a desperate attempt to win away the right-wing vote from the Tories, Brown launched a law and order programme that advocates locking young people and their parents away for the trivial ‘offences’ covered by ‘antisocial behaviour’.
In his speech Brown said: ‘Let me tell you there is no place and no excuse for those who perpetrate antisocial behaviour in my Britain.’
In an attempt to turn local residents into informers he announced the launch of a new telephone number.
It would be ‘a new single non-emergency number making it as easy to complain about antisocial behaviour as it is to ring 999 for an emergency.’
Continuing his attack he pledged ‘a faster process to apply for Asbos, and tougher action when they are breached.
‘And I can announce that from today there will be a clear expectation that breaching an Asbo will result in prosecution.’
He then laid into the parents of Asbo ‘offenders’.
Brown said: ‘New legislation currently before parliament will ensure, in addition, that if the person breaching the Asbo is under 16, action will also be taken against the parents.’
To house all those who have committed ‘antisocial offences’ he boasted that Labour had established 27,000 more prison places since 1997.
Brown went on to advocate a tough regime for people who did not get prison sentences.
‘We have tough new “community payback”, doing hard work in public wearing orange jackets, paying back to the communities they have harmed – as we saw during the floods in Cumbria earlier this year.
‘In many areas we have given people the right to vote on the schemes criminals work on – and today we are announcing the next phase of “community cashback”, in which people can vote on how £4 million of assets seized from criminals will be used to pay back to the community.’
He went on to boast about the increase in the numbers of Police in Britain:
‘Today police numbers – at over 140,000 – are at an all-time high. That’s nearly 17,000 more than in 1997.
‘On top of that, we have more than 16,000 new police community support officers. In 1997 there were none.’
Brown explained that police funding must be sacrosanct. ‘So my challenge to local authorities and police authorities around the country is to match our commitment to protecting front-line policing – or else explain to their communities why they are not prepared to do so.
‘And explain what else is more important than keeping their streets safe and continuing to drive down crime and antisocial behaviour and to drive down fear.
‘So our commitment to protecting the record numbers of police officers and PCSOs is clear.’
Brown continued to outline more tough sanctions.
He stated that Labour would ‘not be taking no for an answer, with tough sanctions for those families who refuse to change, to break the cycle of antisocial behaviour, drug and alcohol abuse, and poverty.’
