ESSEX police and crime commissioner Nick Alston is looking to reduce the demands placed on officers dealing with drink and drug abusers.<\/p>\n
Mr Alston (pictured) has pledged to ensure a greater level of shared responsibility in tackling the issue with organisations outside of the police, particularly the hospitality industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cExcessive alcohol consumption fuels or drives much violent crime including domestic abuse,\u201d he said in his Police and Crime Plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a similar link between drugs and certain types of criminality. Tackling alcohol and drugs abuse in conjunction with partners, including Trading Standards, will bring considerable social benefits, including a positive impact on crime and disorder and reducing demand on policing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He acknowledged that tackling alcohol and drugs misuse was \u201ca complex issue\u201d and pledged to review the area more thoroughly, identifying new and cross-cutting approaches in partnership with others, especially the Essex Drug and Alcohol Action Teams.<\/p>\n
Mr Alston is also encouraging the use of restorative justice to prevent young people entering the criminal justice system.
\nAs an \u201cexcellent example\u201d of restorative justice, he highlighted the \u201ctriage\u201d programme in Southend, in which arrested young people work with the council’s Youth Offending Service instead of being prosecuted.<\/p>\n
Essex Police is about to enter the third year of a four-year change programme to save over \u00a342 million from the annual budget by March 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ESSEX police and crime commissioner Nick Alston is looking to reduce the demands placed on officers dealing with drink and drug abusers. Mr Alston (pictured) has pledged to ensure a\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}