By Clare Jerrom, Nicola Barry and Alex Dobson.
Blair crime plan is failing
The government’s crackdown on street crime is failing in half of the target areas across the country, according to home office and police figures.
Muggings will drop overall by 7 per cent across the 10 target forces, but five of these will fail to reduce them, internal home office figures predict. There are also fears that where the initiatives have proved successful, it has been at the expense of tackling other crimes.
The home office is expected to claim success today for the £67 million project showing that only one force has failed and others have achieved huge cuts.
But internal home office predictors say that Merseyside, Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and West Yorkshire will not be able to meet the government’s demand
Source:- The Times Thursday 12 September page 1
Monks warns Blair: you will fail without us
The government was attacked by unions yesterday over public services as they condemned partial privatisation and the treatment of public servants.
TUC general secretary John Monks said the organisation was seeking an urgent meeting with the prime minister over "two-tier workforces", the practice of private employers giving workers poorer conditions than they would receive for the same job in the public sector.
He said: "You won’t deliver your objectives without us."
General secretary of Unison Dave Prentis said that public sector workers were not motivated by greed or by a dividend cheque and that they "deserve more from this government than the failed privatisation policies of the last".
Source:- The Times Thursday 12 September page 12
Accused mother ‘was abused as a child’
The mother of the two-year-old girl who starved to death said she had been abused as a child in court yesterday.
Leanne Labonte denied harming her daughter Ainlee Walker, and told the Old Bailey that she did not know of the 64 injuries on her daughter’s body until the day the child died.
Ainlee was found dead on a table at her mother’s flat in east London in January. Her emaciated body was covered in bruises and burns and her feet had been scalded.
In her evidence, Labonte said she had been abused as a child by her mother’s boyfriend and her older brother. She had also been beaten by her alcoholic mother.
She also admitted she had previously been arrested for neglecting another of her children when he was aged one. In December 1998 she left him alone in a hostel while she went to find some cough medicine for him.
She was cautioned by the police and a protection order was issued for the child
She later wrote to Tony Blair and her local MP complaining about the way council officials had treated her family and about the foster care her son received.
A transcript of Ainlee’s father, Dennis Henry’s comments after he was arrested in January were also read to the court.
Labonte and Henry deny manslaughter and child cruelty.
The case continues.
Source:- The Times Thursday 12 September page 14
Deportation of Afghan family was unlawful
The home secretary acted unlawfully when he ordered the deportation of an Afghan family who had sought refuge in a British mosque, a high court judge ruled yesterday.
Farid and Freiba Ahmadi and their two children were removed to Germany where they had first claimed asylum.
In a decision that will embarrass the government, judge Mr Justice Scott Baker ruled the Ahmadis should have remained in Britain to challenge their removal on human rights grounds. The family will be able to appeal against their deportation.
However, he adjourned until today the decision as to whether the family should be returned to Britain for the hearing.
Lawyers argued, prior to the family’s removal, that they should remain in Britain because the mental health of Mrs Ahmadi, and her children Hadia, aged 6, and Seear, aged 4, would deteriorate if they were returned to Germany where they did not have the support of family and friends they had in Britain.
Source:- The Guardian Thursday 12 September page 9
Minorities hit by homelessness
Ethnic minority households are almost three times more likely to be homeless than their white counterparts, according to government figures.
Source:- The Guardian Thursday 12 September page 13
Scottish newspapers
Carry On Smacking
Jim Wallace’s plans to ban smacking have been rejected by his fellow MSPs.
The remainder of the justice minister’s key proposals in the Criminal Justice Bill have taken a savaging as well.
Source:- The Record September 12 page 15
Treatment of heroin addicts a disaster
A former home office drugs chief has branded government handling of the heroin issue in the 1960’s an "unmitigated disaster", and one which helped nurture the current culture of addiction and crime.
In a book just published, 'Bing Spear', a drugs branch officer from 1952 until 1986 gives a highly critical account of the evolution of policy. A number of problems, he says, arose from the decision to ban doctors issuing heroin.
The book is released just as home secretary David Blunkett is examining the possibility of increasing the number of clinicians who can provide heroin as part of their treatment programmes.
Source:- The Herald September 12 page 6
Welsh newspapers
Pushers target children
As part of a campaign ‘Dump the Dealers’ highlighting the escalating drug problem in south Wales, the newspaper looks at the way that dealers are targeting children.
Police say that they are seeing children as young as 10 becoming addicts, and that there is a cheap and ready supply of drugs like heroin available in valley communities.
Research by the police shows that the price of heroin dropped dramatically in south Wales between 1998 and 1999 because of supplies coming from the nearest port of Newport.
Detective inspector Steve Webber, head of the Organised Crime Group for Gwent Police, said that there were children as young as 10 on class ‘A’ drugs such as crack cocaine.
"Because it gives them such a high, they get in such a depression when they come down they have to have more and more just to bring them up to normality. This evil scourge destroys families and breaks down the whole fabric of society," he said.
Source:- South Wales Echo Wednesday 11 September page 18
