§ Mr. HancockTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has made of the percentage of recorded crime in the Portsmouth, South constituency that was drug-related in each of the last five years; and if he will make a statement. [35442]
§ Mr. Bob AinsworthInformation is not available in the form requested. However, the New English and Welsh Arrestee Drug Abuse monitoring (NEW-ADAM), a national research programme, confirms the link between drugs misuse and crime. Summary data published in September 2001 based on eight sites in 1999–2000 found that up to 65 per cent. of arrestees tested positive for an illegal drug with up to 29 per cent. testing positive for opiates (including heroin) and/or cocaine (including crack).
We are determined to break the link between drug misuse and crime and have introduced a number of initiatives to get offenders out of crime and into treatment. These include, for example, arrest referral schemes and Drug Treatment Testing Orders in the Portsmouth courts of which 47 have been made since they became available in December 2000.
The allocation of funding to Hampshire constabulary in 2001–02 for arrest referral schemes in their force area, including Portsmouth, was £188,323 for arrest referral workers and £108,240 towards treatment. In addition, we have allocated £166,939 to the Portsmouth Crime and Disorder Partnership in 2001–02 from the Communities Against Drugs fund, to put in place targeted, locally determined measures to strengthen the community, disrupt the local drugs market and generally tackle drugs and drug related crime.