Work continues to tackle high levels of crime across Teesside
Cleveland's Police and Crime Commissioner says re-offending rates are going down
The Police and Crime Commissioner for Cleveland says they need to reduce re-offending wherever they can to tackle high levels of crime.
We have been giving insight into what it is like behind-the-scenes at the custody suite in Middlesbrough all this week.
Matt Storey said: "It's about tailoring those responses to people coming into the custody suite, young people coming into the custody suite, so that they get the support that they need. We need to make sure the provision is right for them. Often when people come into custody they do have chaotic lifestyles, they may have substance misuse and mental health issues. All of the custody navigator work that we do is making sure that the provision is right for them.
"What I've seen from the police officers in the suite is that they have a real focus on the welfare of the people coming through the door. They want it to be one and done. They want to see them once and then never see them again. The best way to do that is to make sure they get the support and help they need and that's what we've got there. We've got that facility to do that.
"One of the concerns for me is often community police get drawn out of that neighbourhood policing work and they may end up plugging gaps in other areas of the force. What I want is for them to be devoted to that problem solving and community policing work because that's where they have the greatest impact, and that has the biggest impact on our communities; making people feel safe, identifying problems and then tackling them.
"We've got the divert programme which often custodial sentences aren't the right solution for people. Wherever we can we need to make sure that people get the support they need and often that often can be educational, it can be about training, making sure that people get the right support that they need to keep them out a life of crime or get drawn into crime.
"We also have things like restorative justice which I think is really important to getting perpetrators and people who commit crime to talk to the victims, it helps both the victim and the perpetrator to understand the relationship and foster more tolerance, because I think that's something we've lost over time. We need to make sure we utilise all of those types of work in order to reduce re-offending.
"It's tough for the police to do the job that they want to do and I think they would like to be able to do more and they'd like to be able to police in a different way, but resources mean they struggle to do all the different things they'd like to do. If we can get crime and anti-social behaviour down then the police can think about more engagement work and other types of community policing, which are effective but perhaps they don't have the time to do."