The decision of Okehampton Town Council (OTC) to write to the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) expressing their concerns over the apparent lack of effective action by the police on incidents of vandalism (so called) in the town is laudable. However, I fear that any reply from the PCC will consist of the usual platitudes about sharing their concerns and excuses as to why more effective action cannot be taken.

Perhaps a starting point for more effective action is that the police, and the local press, should stop labelling incidents, where deliberate damage is caused to fixtures and property, as vandalism but by the correct name of criminal damage and for the police to act accordingly.

In his response to OTC’s concerns that the police were reluctant to charge children with an anti-social behaviour offence, PC Hawke admitted the police tried to deal with juveniles differently due to their age and that they tried to keep children out of the criminal justice system so as to not criminalise them. Well, the dictionary definition of a criminal is ‘a person who has committed a crime’. Please note that it does not say convicted of a crime but simply having committed a crime. Therefore taking juveniles who cause criminal damage, which is a crime, to court does not criminalise them as they are already, by definition, criminals.

Perhaps I am naive but my understanding is that police have two overriding roles — to act as a deterrent to crime and, if the deterrent fails, to apprehend the criminals and bring them to a court to face justice. It is then up to the court to decide on an appropriate punishment — not the police. However, the police with their youth offending teams and youth intervention teams appear to have become a uniformed subsidiary of social services. Perhaps, if all the police officers involved on those teams were released to provide a badly needed increase of uniformed officers on the streets and in public spaces then the police might better fulfill their primary role of deterring crime.

Charles Letchford

Okehampton