Some Teesside MPs say more police needed on streets to fight crime
Some politicians have been telling us their thoughts
A number of MPs in Teesside say putting more police on the street is key to tackling high numbers of crime.
The politicians from Hartlepool, Middlesbrough and South East Cleveland and Bishop Auckland have been telling us their thoughts and what they want to see.
Luke Myer, MP for Middlesbrough and South East Cleveland, said: "It's about restoring neighbourhood policing again, getting named community police officers back out in communities again.
"It's about bringing back visible community policing again and it's been eroded over the last few years. There's lots of communities that just feel like you never see police officers anymore and police following the cuts that we've seen over the last decade, the police were kind of left in a reactive response rather than kind of the preventative work that they can do in communities.
"We need to build more prisons. The previous Government didn't do it. Beyond that, we've got to make sure that we're preventing crime and tackling the causes of crime as well so that's about investing in mental health, CCTV in communities, education to make sure we're preventing vulnerable young people from being exploited by criminal gangs. It starts in schools."
Jonathan Brash, MP for Hartlepool, said: "Police on the beat, real community policing and restoring people's confidence. Our police force are working incredibly hard in enormously challenging situations.
"I don't think it helped frankly when the Conservative Party downgraded Hartlepool's police station so the custody suite is only part time now, which I think is nonsense. It's something that I'll be raising to ministers. On shoplifting, we're getting rid of the £200 limit under which the police don't investigate, that's a nonsense as well. Most shoplifting is under £200.
"What I think we need quite clearly is police on the beat. That's something that the Labour party has committed to have, a return to real community policing ensuring our town centres are safe. We need tougher sentencing and we need more prison space, that's got to change because ultimately if you can commit a crime you need to serve the punishment that's due and clearly at the moment, if you don't have the prison space you can't do that."
Sam Rushworth, MP for Bishop Auckland, said: "If we can improve custody and speed up the processing then that can actually help to put more police on the streets where they need to be, fighting crime.
"firstly, we need a lot more frontline community police but also it's about relieving police in other areas. For example if we fixed mental health services, police officers wouldn't be having to do the job that really a crisis mental health care team should be doing, so we need to resource them and also, we do need to get tough and put victims first.
He thinks the Government has to move to 'centralise' custody suites, which might be unpopular with some people: "It means that for example when the police can make an arrest and that person has an injury, they don't have to be then taken to A&E because they have a medical staff team on site. One of the things there is that you're always around people in handcuffs with police and obviously with A&E waiting times being what they are, 12-hour waits at A&E, it takes two police officers off the streets. That's 24 hours."