Changes suggested to Dangerous Dogs Act: Home Secretary speech on crime and anti-social behaviour

Changes suggested to Dangerous Dogs Act: Home Secretary speech on crime and anti-social behaviour; Alan Johnson MP speech SOT The most serious cases should not take months, even years to get to court - the evidential requirement is not always so high that it requires the victim to make six months of painstakingly detailed diary entries before they get any respite. Recently in West Sussex, there was a case where a teenage girl was terrorising a neighbourhood with threats of violence. It took a housing officer, working with the police and the council, not two months, not even two weeks, but two days to get the courts to grant an emergency ASBO. Middlesbrough council are currently applying for 4 ASBOs on gang members, relying on just 3 witness statements, a statement from police and one from the Council. The case has taken 2 weeks to compile, and will be in court within a further fortnight. - From 5 April, the Ministry of Justice are giving judges new powers to set targets to make sure that individual applications for ASBOs are dealt with much more speedily by the courts than they are at present. And when agencies and the police fail to take action to protect communities from antisocial behaviour, there should be some kind of redress, a holding to account of the services that have failed. I want to explore what more we can do to provide victims with more protection when they have been let down so they get the support necessary to pursue any legal action against the perpetrator of their distress, with the agency which has failed them obliged to meet the costs. - The second element is prevention. Crime and antisocial behaviour are often symptoms of more deep-rooted problems – family dysfunction, domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, lack of opportunity and poor education. It has always been the case that a handful of people are responsible for the vast majority of crime and antisocial behaviour. Ten per cent of people are responsible for over half of...