The Scottish Strategic Priorities Document

[Eck]

What a load of WANKSPEAK!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8131464.stm

The Scottish Strategic Priorities document identifies terrorism, drugs, violence and anti-social behaviour as four of the biggest threats.
The list is completed by organised crime and public protection offences such as domestic abuse, child abuse and sex crimes.

So these are the biggest issues affecting our communities is it? I'm pretty sure that if you asked someone what they'd rather have, given the choice of their house being broken into and some kids shouting in the street then they'd rather have the kid in the street... I would think anyway.

These are all choices which serve to be easily manipulated to be sucesses and thus hail the Scottish Strategic Priorities Document the best thing since sliced bread.

Firstly, terrorism is a big factor in the UK, however, how often does it happen. A lot of the leg work into prevention of terrorism is done by the secuurity services and the police are called into carry out the house searches and arrests. What are they actually classifing as terrorism? This is a category that will usually have a high solvency rate in the current climate. Culrpits of terrorist offences are often caught with explosives or incrimminating evidence and this would therefore be classed as a solved crime. However, how many terrorists are actaully out there at the moment with these items in their possession? No one knows. Also, the current trend for terrorists is the suicide bomb. These are often accompanied by an addmission video which really makes things easy for the police.

In respect of tackling drugs there is nothing to base the figures on as no one actually knows how much cocaine, heroine etc are actually coming into the country. So the police use any figures they gain to their advantage:

"Drug recoveries are down, this shows that there are less drugs on the street and our work is effective."

or

"Drug recoveries are up, therefore we have been working extremely hard and are winning the war on drugs."

With nothing to compare it against this is always going to be a winner for the police. However, in reality, the prices of drugs are always coming down so that would indicate that there are large stock piles of drugs waiting to be sold and that they are more available to buy than ever before.

The figures for solving violent crime are often high. This is for a number of reasons. A lot of assaults happen in city centres at weekends where the areas are flooded with police. The culprits are often drunk and are either detained at the scene or nearby due to CCTV etc (this is where I agree that CCTV works, not on residential streets). The other assaults which take part in small communities are often carried out by someone known to the vicitm and the culprit is again easily captured or the victim will not want to take it any further.

Again, organised crime is hard to measure against as very few people call up and say "There is some people trafficking going on at the moment in Dover."

These options in my opinion have been chosen due to their ambiguous measurements rather than their effects on communities. I would say that most communities would say that anti-socail behaviour, vandalism, housebreaking and child protection issues would be their biggest concerns, as these are the things that effect them daily. When standing waiting on a bus at Porty High Street people don't hesitate getting onto the bus incase their are terrorists on it, do they? However, there are some chip shops that people will not go to after dark as there is a high chance that they will suffer abuse or worse.

Good old senior officers though, you can't beat them. I wonder how long it took them to come up with that and how many 'communities' they consulted.