Police told not to target teen knife suspects
ONE of Hollywood’s mostfamous child stars Jane Withers has passed away at 95.
Born in 1926 in Atlanta, Georgia, Jane began performing at the age of three. Her first silver screen role was in 1934’s Bright Eyes.
She went on to appear in Ginger,
The Farmer Takes a
Wife, Little Miss Nobody and
Paddy O’Day.
Jane, who married twice and had five children, retired from the movies aged 21 but later performed in
1956 film Giant with James Dean. Daughter Kendall Errair said she was “such a special lady”. She died surrounded by her loved ones on Saturday. No official cause of death has been revealed.
EXCLUSIVE
MINISTERS have rejected plans to let police stop and search teenage knife carriers, despite widespread support for the move, the Daily Express can reveal.
The majority who replied to a Government consultation sent to police, communities and criminal justice experts backed Serious Violence Reduction Orders (SVROs) for anyone over 12.
The court orders, being piloted by Thames Valley, West Midlands, Merseyside and Sussex police forces, give officers new powers to target convicted knife and weapons offenders.
Sixty-four per cent of the 458 responses said they should apply to over-12s caught with a knife. Twenty-one per cent said they should affect those 14 and over.
Only 14.6 per cent backed the Government’s view that SVROs should apply only to adults.
However, a Home Office consultation document said: “While we consider that an SVRO will have an important deterrent effect, helping an offender to distance themselves from and resist pressure to carry weapons, we are not currently proposing to extend the SVRO model to apply to under-18s.”
It added ministers would keep it under review, but said: “The evidence shows that the peak age for knife carrying is 14-15 year olds and the Government is committed to exploring all options to help prevent these children from being exploited by crime gangs.”
The report acknowledged that those who backed SVROs for both children and adults noted that “there seems to be a prevalence in young people under 18 carrying bladed articles, in particular those aged 16 and 17 years old”.
It said:
“By stopping and searching offenders in this age bracket, they argued that the police would be able to target a cohort that sentencing data show are engaging in knife crime.
“Whether supportive or unsupportive, many of the responses noted the ‘displacement effect’ of adults passing their weapons to others (particularly children) if subjected to an SVRO, which may result in the criminalisation of children.”
In the same report, ministers also rejected plans to extend SRVOs to every violent criminal, a move supported by 55 per cent.
They said they did not believe it would be “appropriate” for “individuals who have not committed an offence involving the carriage or use of a weapon”.
The Home Office concluded: “We think that extending SVROs to any offence involving violence would be too broad, as it could mean that a person could be stopped and searched for a weapon, despite never having been convicted of carrying or using one.”
It added: “We therefore think that the SVRO should be available on conviction for offences involving the possession or use of a knife or other offensive weapon.”