Hundreds more police on beat

The police are to receive an extra £1.3bn to recruit hundreds of beat officers and to tackle robbery, burglary and car crime.

The police are to receive an extra £1.3bn to recruit hundreds of beat officers and to tackle robbery, burglary and car crime.

Millions of pounds of additional money is also being provided to expand the national DNA database, speed the criminal justice system, provide new prison cells, combat drug related crime and provide treatment programmes for addicts.

The money is part of a £2.4bn boost to the Home Office budget over the next three years.

The huge cash injection into the police includes a commitment to provide an extra 5,000 beat officers. The budget allocation for law and order is a response to the Government's growing alarm at the recent rise in crime, particularly muggings and violent offences, and the public clamour for more police officers. Official figures published yesterday that show a 16 per cent rise in violent crime have increased concern.

The bulk of the £1.3bn extra money for police in England and Wales during the next three years - a rise of 3.8 per cent for each year - will be aimed at new recruits.

Forces throughout the country have had to freeze their recruitment programmes because of budget restrictions. Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, has already predicted police numbers will rise above 127,000 by March 2002 and the new money should see that increase significantly. Chief constables, however, have warned that their training centres are near full capacity and are unhappy at being told how to spend their budgets.

An extra £160m is expected to fund community-based schemes to tackle vehicle crime, robbery and domestic burglary. Additional funding is also being spent on upgrading the police radio system and increasing the number of DNA samples taken from suspects.

Police divisions that aresuccessful in bringing down crime will get extra money from a £5m fund.

Overall the Home Office's budget will rise from £8.2bn this year to £10.6bn in 2003-04. Full details of how the budget is to be divided will be announced today.

Prisons and the probation services are to get an extra cash injection, believed to be about £650m, to provide hundreds of new cells to house the rising prison population and to provide greater drug treatment programmes and literacy classes in jails.

A pot of £525m is to be spent on the criminal justice service over the next three years to speed up and modernise courts and introduce new technology.