Page 12 QQQ Daily Mail, Tuesday, August 13, 2019
BORIS WAR ON
PM pledges to roll
out airport-style
scanners and mobile
phone blockers in
£100m crackdown
Historic: But
Bedford has
been hit by
a deadly
crimewaveCOUNTY lines gangs are fuelling a surge in drug crimes
in small towns and villages, police data shows, and while
overall drug crime is falling, there is a major shift in
where the crimes are taking place.
Large cities have seen drug crime decline, but towns
and villages outside have seen a rise. For example, in the
past five years, drug crime in Liverpool has fallen 20 per
cent but 15 miles away in Chester it has increased by 40
per cent. We look at one town which has been affected...for the Crown Prosecution
Service to improve capacity
and manage caseloads, includ-
ing clearing a backlog over the
next two years.
It will further fuel speculation
that Mr Johnson is preparing
the ground for an early general
election amid continuing dead-
lock in Parliament over Brexit.
A YouGov poll yesterday sug-
gested the plans had gone down
well with the public, who back
stop-and-search 74 per cent to
14 per cent. Among Tory voters,
it is 93 per cent, and 90 per cent
among Brexit voters.
Labour and Lib Dem voters
also back the move, with 61 per
cent support from both parties.
Yesterday, Mr Johnson held a
round-table meeting at Down-
ing Street for leading figures in
the criminal justice system to
discuss his proposals, including
Britain’s most senior police
officer Cressida Dick.
He told representatives from
the police, victims’ services and
other groups that ‘faster justice’
was required and cited pledges,
including increasing jail capacity
and employing more officers.
‘But no matter what we do
with the criminal justice system,
we also have to recognise that
you cannot just arrest your way
out of a problem,’ he added.
‘And I think all police officers,
all representatives of the crimi-
nal justice system, will know
that. You have to address the
whole problem and, number
one, you’ve got to stop young
people becoming criminals,
stop them getting on what
used to be called the conveyor
belt to crime, turn their lives
around earlier, give them oppor-
tunities, hope and encourage-
ment that they need.’
Others present included Home
Secretary Priti Patel, Sir Brian
Leveson, who served as the most
senior criminal judge in England
and Wales, and Solicitor General
Michael Ellis QC. Discussing thecrowded jails, who would take
up most of the extra spaces.
Asked if the announcements
were a case of ‘Johnsonian spin’,
Mr Buckland said: ‘He wants to
see prison being used appropri-
ately to its fullest effect to pro-
tect the public.’
He added: ‘This isn’t a system
that should be based upon tar-
gets or numbers, it should be
based upon the merits of indi-
vidual cases and that’s what
judges do up and down our
country every day.’
Mr Johnson announced on
Monday that rapists and mur-
derers could spend longer in jail
as he seeks to make punish-
ments ‘truly fit the crime’.
He ordered an urgent review
into sentencing – reporting
direct to Downing Street.
It will focus on violent and sex-
ual offenders, and look at
whether changes in the law are
needed to lock them up for
longer by not letting them out
part-way through a sentence.
The review will also consider
how to break the cycle of repeat
offenders, perhaps making them
serve longer sentences.
The Prime Minister said that
dangerous criminals must be
taken off the streets as he prom-
ised to ‘come down hard’ on
crime and restore public confi-
dence in the justice system.By Claire Ellicott
Political Correspondent
BORIS Johnson will today unveil
a £100million crackdown on
crime in jails to prevent drugs
and weapons being smuggled in.
The Prime Minister will pledge to
roll out airport-style X-ray scanners,
metal detectors and mobile phone
blockers to stop criminals operating
inside Britain’s jails.
There has been intense concern about
the ease with which prisoners appear to
be able to smuggle narcotics in, as well
as weapons and mobile phones – which
allow them to communicate with their
criminal networks on the outside.
The security measures are designed to
be rolled out to all jails. The X-ray scan-
ners and the metal detectors will tackle
drug smuggling, while advanced technol-
ogy will block mobile phones to ensure
gang bosses cannot run their operations
or harass victims from inside.
The money will also help to fund tech-
nology to prevent corruption by prison
staff who help offenders.
Mr Johnson said: ‘We cannot allow our
prisons to become factories for making
bad people worse. We will stop the drugs,
weapons and the mobile phones coming
in, so we can safeguard victims, protect
staff, cut violence and make our prisons
properly equipped to reform and reha-
bilitate. The public must see justice
being done, punishment being served
and feel protected.’
It is the latest in a series of law and
order announcements designed to appeal
to the Conservative Party’s grassroots
and make it look tough on crime again.
In recent weeks, Mr Johnson has
pledged to recruit 20,000 more police
officers, expand stop-and-search powers,
announced a review into sentencing and
promised to spend £2.5billion creating
10,000 extra prison spaces.
He also pledged an extra £85million
Proposal: Scanners would be placed at jail entrances
‘Factories for making
bad people worse’
‘He wants jails to
protect public’T
HE Great Ouse river
flows slowly through the
town’s historic centre.
Majestic Victorian houses
line pretty avenues and
fast trains whizz to London in
a little more than half an hour.
Welcome to Bedford, where a
keystone of public life is the
Harpur Trust charity whose
mission is to ‘inspire and sup-
port people in the borough to
improve their lives’.
But there is another side to the
town – and one that is shared by
countless others like it. It is facing a
terrifying wave of vice highlighted in
a BBC analysis yesterday which
reported that drug-related crime is
increasing in many small towns and
villages as it falls significantly in
cities.
This starkly shows the challenge
faced by Home Secretary Priti Patel
who has pledged a return to zero-tol-
erance policing. Signalling an uncom-
promising stance, she has declared:
‘Any form of drug use has a corrosive
impact on people and communities.
You don’t turn a blind eye to it.’
She could have been talking about
Bedfordshire. For here, almost one in
ten of people aged between 18 and 59
regularly take illegal substances,
according to a police report. They
spend £113 million a year on canna-
bis and the ‘middle-class dinner
party treat’ cocaine, both of which
are on sale almost round the clock.
This part of rural Britain, and many
others, have become unwitting hot-
beds of crime fuelled by young drug-
runners travelling here to hard-sell
their wares (and collect the cash
spoils for their gang masters).
It is a phenomenon called ‘county
lines’, defined by the National Crime
Agency as how criminal gangs
expand sales into smaller towns,
often using violence to drive out local
dealers and, meanwhile, exploitingchildren to peddle the drugs. ‘Go to
Bedford station early in the morning
and you’ll see teenage drug-runners
getting on trains to London after a
night selling their stuff in the town,’
a police officer who knows the area
well told the Mail.
‘They are in pricey trainers and
peering at mobile phones. They are
not in school uniform like the other
kids travelling at that time. That
evening, they will be back on the train
into Bedford with more drugs to sell.’
Detective Chief Superintendent
Mark Lay, a national expert on the
rise of county lines, and Bedfordshire
police’s head of Serious Organised
Crime, says there are 34,000 drug-
users in his county. ‘Drugs markets
now operate in our urban towns and
have permeated our countryside,
too. The rise of county lines have
made getting drugs easier and, even
in rural communities, people can
often buy them 24/7.’
With the drugs frenzy has come vio-
lent warfare as young runners, paid
£100 a day or more by gangs, clash
over territory.
Bedfordshire, says Mr Lay, has
more knife crime than major conur-
bations such as Greater Manchester
and Merseyside. In the east of Eng-
land, it is high in an unenviable
league for gunshot injuries linked
directly to county lines.
In Bedford, those statistics hide
awful human suffering, such as the
deaths of two brothers caught up in
this world. How the once-peaceful
English heartland has changed.
This month a parliamentary commit-
tee warned of a ‘social emergency’
caused by spiralling youth violence
linked to county lines. It said the crisisBy Sue
Reid
10,000 extra prison places on
BBC Radio 4’s Today pro-
gramme yesterday, Justice Sec-
retary Robert Buckland insisted
the pledge was new.
It was first made in 2015 by
former justice secretary Michael
Gove, then by his successor Liz
Truss in 2016 and was also in the
2017 snap election manifesto.
Responding to the charge that
just 3,500 extra places had so far
been delivered, Mr Buckland
insisted there would be 13,
extra places by the mid-2020s.
He said he would focus on the
8,700 inmates living in over-РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" V1 VK.COM/WSNWS