Priti Patel has unveiled new plans to crack down on crime and antisocial behaviour on Britain’s streets, by forcing criminals – including drug offenders – to pick litter and carry out charity work as part of a renewed push to make “yobs pay back the communities they’ve blighted“. The scheme forms part of Boris’s Beating Crime Plan – announced today – which also aims to tag more burglars released from jail, relaxes restrictions on stop-and-search, and promises to provide a named police officer to every local community in the country.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Patel said:

“The public want to see justice done and criminals pay the price for their crimes. They want to see yobs pay back to the communities they’ve blighted by their thoughtless actions.

That’s why we are relaunching unpaid work so it is more visible, to ensure offenders are publicly making reparations for their crimes by undertaking work that is valuable to their local areas, such as cleaning the streets, estates, alleyways and open spaces of litter and other visible signs of disorder in local neighbourhoods.”

Sweeping reforms…