Community Safety and Human Rights
Many of the problems of crime, drug abuse and anti-social behaviour are related to poverty and social exclusion. The solution can never simply be more police or more CCTV cameras; it has to involve a fundamental rebuilding of values and community relations. We need to provide more opportunities for work, play, learning and socialising, and to empower individuals and communities to take control of their lives. Maidstone Greens will:
- ensure licensing times respect local people
- promote night bus schemes for late night revelers
- promote self-policing in town by encouraging more people to live there (e.g. over shops) and creating lively, well-lit pedestrian areas. The town centre should not be areas where people are scared to go at night
- develop Neighbourhood Watch schemes into broader community forums with police support. These can often help to prevent crime and vandalism by identifying local problems and potential solutions
- encourage a greater emphasis on restorative justice - which focuses on repairing the harm to the victim rather than simply punishing the offender - and community rehabilitation of offenders, to reduce re-offending rates
- expand facilities for teenagers throughout the borough, always in consultation with young people themselves
- strengthen support for the rehabilitation of drug abusers and increase education on drugs and alcohol in schools, colleges and youth groups
- use planning powers to encourage well-balanced communities and to make the built environment safer for everybody
- conflict prevention e.g. through twinning with communities in developing countries and providing support e.g. through 2-way short-term secondments of local government staff to/from the twinned town to transfer skills and knowledge and build capacity
- ensuring protection, welfare and respect for asylum seekers
- work with KCC seek to provide a suitable site for travellers, in consultation with travellers and the settled community
- ensure that the Council implements its Race Equality Scheme and other equality policies, and adopts an anti-discrimination charter
