Our local MP Kate Hollern in her fortnightly column addresses the subject of law and order highlighting the serious reduction in police numbers over the years.

The rot actually started with the Labour government but the Tory party compounded the problem and in Life on Mars vernacular Theresa May during her nine year tenure as Home Secretary and PM was ‘bang to rights’ in overseeing huge cuts in police numbers.

Between 2010 and 2019 the police establishment was reduced by 122,395 officers and to compound the situation there was a further reduction in civilian staff of 15,894 confining more officers to their desks. The thin blue line became thinner with one-in-three beat bobbies axed.

You may recall she received a deafening wall of silence at the Police Federation Conference in 2015 when she roasted and stunned its members with a vitriolic speech.

Our MP suggests there is a lack of crime prevention measures and it is a depressing statistic that half of offenders jailed for theft and a third jailed for robbery go on to reoffend within a year from release from prison.

In an effort to combat this behaviour the Ministry of Justice has introduced plans to automatically tag prolific offenders on their release.This programme will be rolled out throughout the country. The ankle tag would be worn for a year and unlike current curfew tags it will operate on a GPS signal sent via satellite with a 24/7 home monitoring unit.

Data from the tags will help to either implicate or eliminate a suspect from an investigation.For those libertarians out there who argue this is a serious infringement of a person’s personal freedom I would argue that I would sooner see law abiding citizens sleep sounder in their beds. Mind how you go...

Jim Oldcorn (Retired Det Insp)