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Wednesday, October 16, 1974
clear duty to restore their peace of mind.
I will not recapitulate the detailed account
I gave last year of your Government's many-sided approach
to this problem. But in the last year the thrust
has been developed on three main points: firstly to. recruit, train and sensibly deploy more policemen; secondly to improve police techniques, procedures and organization; thirdly to mobilise people in neighbourhoods to assist each other and the Police to deter crime. With a successful
combination of all these things we should have a larger and more efficient police force tackling crime in circumstances which would be much more difficult for the criminal. Neither the police alone nor the public alone can turn back this tide, but acting together as a united community I believe we can.
In this approach we are attempting new methods for dealing with a problem which the world elsewhere has signally
failed to master..
Your Government is of course also pressing on with
other action which might bear on crime. The provision of assisted secondary education for all is one of them; expansion, co-ordination and improved supervision of recreational and community facilities is another. I am sure that boredom and
lack of healthy outlets for energy breed crime.
But while
such measures could, and I hope will, help in the long term, we are confronted with an immediate and pressing problem calling
for more effective action to deter crime.
The substance of the problem - a rising crime rate -
is still very much with us, and indeed it would be surprising
if dramatic results had been achieved here in so short a time
over a problem that has proved so intractable elsewhere.
/Crime statistics