Government plans to tackle violent crime

Police officers are to be equipped with hundreds of portable metal-detecting arches and wands as part of a new government plan to crack down on violent crime.

The metal-detecting equipment – familiar to air travellers the world over – will be easily transportable in the back of a police car, and will enable police to set up checkpoints at clubs, schools and bars without the needs to physically frisk those coming in.

The new metal detectors are just one prominent element of the Home Office's "tackling violence action plan", launched on Monday.

Also proposed are a £1 million awareness campaign aimed at combating the "glamour" associated with knives among some young people, a presumption to prosecute anyone found carrying a knife, and tougher sentences for knife crime.

Home secretary Jacqui Smith declared: "We are determined not to let violent offenders get away with wrecking lives by stopping them committing crimes in the first place. That is why I am today pledging that by 2011, we will have reduced serious violent crime, including gun and gang-related violence, knife crime, sexual and domestic violence and improved the criminal justice response to these offences."

Knife-inflicted fatal injuries rose from 219 in 2005/06 to 258 in 2006/07.

The action plan also focuses on sexual and domestic violence. Numbers of sexual assault referral centres will be increased to 48 across the whole of the country, while in four areas police forces will be permitted to release details about local child sex offenders' convictions to certain members of the public.

This latter provision – the so-called "Sarah's Law", named after murdered eight-year-old Sarah Payne – will be piloted in Cleveland, Cambridgeshire, Hampshire and Warwickshire.

Parents in these areas will be able to ask police to run checks on people who have unsupervised access to their children, including family members who offer to babysit.

Single mothers will also be able to obtain information on the backgrounds of potential boyfriends.

The Conservatives, however, have condemned the government's proposals as unlikely to restore much confidence in the criminal justice system.

Shadow home secretary David Davis said: "Fatal stabbings have increased by over a quarter under Labour, and the government has utterly failed to take the kind of decisive - and sustained - action needed to clamp down on knife crime."

Police forces, however, have welcomed the action plan.

Keith Bristow, chief constable of Warwickshire Police and lead on violent crime for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said: "Acpo welcomes the Home Office's action plan published today and we look forward to further collaboration in order to develop the police contribution to the delivery of this plan."