We can cut Crime.

I had time to settle in before attending a briefing from Chris Rennard and the Parliamentary Candidates Association and then onto the ‘We can cut Crime’ rally in the evening.

The Rally was hosted by Nick Clegg our shadow Home Affairs Spokesperson.

It is shocking that 98% of young men coming out of prison go on to offend again. Clearly our current policy of simply locking up offenders is not working and it is the poorest communities suffer most from crime.

Yet in Liberal Democrat run cities and districts across the country we are cutting crime through a series of community initiatives that tackle specific issues at a local level. Baroness Scott presented a film she had made featuring some of these initiatives. In Watford, Vale of White Horse, Newcastle and in Liverpool for example where alley gating has cut crime by placing gates to back alleys across the city, incidentally the gates are manufactured by an organisation as part of a drug rehab project.

Nick outlined the long catalogue of Home Office failures and launched a new web site www.homeofficewatch.com I believe it is vital that we understand what is happening to our Home Office, as this is the department that is supposed to take care of many services that affect us, such as the Police and law & order.

Crime is one of the themes of this conference so I am sure there will be more on this in the next couple of days.