Street Crime (Hansard, 19 September 2002)

§ Mr. Laws
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment he has made of the reasons underlying the recent increase in street crime in England. [562381]

§ Mr. Denham
[holding answer 21 May 2002]: Crime overall has fallen in recent years and the chances of becoming a victim of crime are at their lowest for 20 years. However, by contrast street crime—i.e. robberies, snatch thefts—has shown a sharp increase, particularly over the last year.
Tackling street crime is now a top priority for the government, which announced a programme of action on 17 March 2002.
The government recognises that street crime has social and economic causes that cannot be tackled by the police and criminal justice agencies alone. That is why this strategy brings together all agencies, all departments, and all systems that impact on young people at risk from crime, at risk of offending, and offenders themselves and to work together to more effectively tackle street crime.
The work aims to reverse the upward trend before looking to bring about sustainable reductions in the long-term.
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This means tackling persistent offenders, speeding up the criminal justice system and giving a better service for victims and witnesses.
We need to tackle the roots of the problem by getting to children before they become involved in crime. This means tackling truancy, young people excluded from school should not be left to roam the streets. And from September we are providing for all permanently excluded pupils to have access to full-time education. We are also supporting the placement of up to 100 police officers in schools most affected by crime.
We are also providing constructive activities to keep children out of trouble during school holidays with an additional £12 million for Summer Splash schemes.
It is also part of our strategy on drugs to break the link between drugs and crime.
Finally, we are supporting the work of the mobile phone industry to put stolen phones—a key factor in the rise in street crime—out of use by legislating to ban the re-programming of mobile phones.

§ Simon Hughes
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many mobile telephone thefts there were, broken down by police force area, in the last 12 months; and if he will make a statement. [72088]

§ Mr. Denham
Centrally the Home Office does not collect or collate statistics on mobile phone thefts.

§ Simon Hughes
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has made of the proportion of street robberies that involved mobile telephone theft in the last 12 months; and if he will make a statement. [72089]

§ Mr. Denham
The Home Office does not centrally collect or collate statistics on the number of mobile phone thefts and individual police forces do not routinely collect such figures either, although some do for their own purposes. We cannot therefore estimate the proportion of street robberies that involved mobile phone theft in the last 12 months.
However, a Home Office Report on "Mobile Phone Theft" published in January 2002 estimated that in 2000–01 mobile phones were stolen in 28 per cent. of all robberies.
The Government has made significant progress in working with the mobile phone industry and the police to tackle mobile phone theft. From the end of September, network operators will be able to bar stolen handsets across all networks by reference to the unique International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number. To complement this measure, the Government has passed the Mobile Telephones (Re-programming) Bill which creates new criminal offences of unauthorised re-programming of the IMEI number and possessing, supplying or offering to supply equipment for that purpose. We are continuing to press the industry to put in place a long-term strategy to enhance the security of 3G devices.