Without effective local police forces, efforts to curb crime will founder

SIR – The only way to get proper neighbourhood policing (Letters, April 7) is to restore local police forces. Current sub-regional police services dealing with terrorism and other national issues cannot concentrate their resources where the public most needs them.

A local police force, such as we in Grimsby used to have, worked in the communities. Officers actually lived in the areas that they policed and therefore knew who was who.

Surely this type of street-level intelligence is crucial to efforts to spot possible radicalisation and deal with local crime. Richard Bellamy

Grimsby, Lincolnshire

SIR – For Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, to say that the reduction in police numbers has nothing to do with the increase in crime (Comment, April 8) is as ridiculous as saying “the hole in the boat is not the reason it’s sinking”. Michael J Collins

Cowbeech, East Sussex SIR – Iain Duncan Smith’s advocacy of effective intervention programmes alongside police enforcement tactics (Comment, April 6) is to be applauded.

However, let us not forget the root cause: the abuse and violence in the homes that many of these offenders grew up in, and the violent homes that the parents themselves grew up in and probably the grandparents before that.

Research tells us very clearly that adverse childhood experiences, from the moment of birth onwards, are predictive of aggression and violence in later life. More than two thirds of our prison population suffered abuse or neglect in childhood.

Unless we get in early, with sufficient support and sensitive and appropriate parental education, we will not stop this transmission of violence from generation to generation. Daphne Cotton

Wave Trust 70/30 Campaign Twickenham, Middlesex

SIR – Sara Thornton, the chairman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, fears that the decline in the use of stop-and-search tactics is down to a “chill effect where officers feel overly cautious about using a power that has been subject to so much political debate” (News commentary, April 7).

She would do well to remember that this “chill effect” doesn’t come from political interference involving officers on the ground, but rather from their senior officers back at the station, who also have careers to consider. Ian Hargreaves

London W14

SIR – Surely stop and search doesn’t need to be intrusive if a portable, airport-style metal detecting wand could be used following a request to empty pockets.

A brief scan would immediately indicate if there was a potential problem without physical contact or manhandling.

Who could object to that? Gillian S S Lambert

Tadworth, Surrey