Senior police officer blames family breakdown for violent crime 'cancer' destroying society

Ian Johnston, president of the Police Superintendents Association, will also blame a failed education system, inadequate prison and probation services and a violent entertainment industry.

His comments, which will be made to the association's annual conference next week, are certain to be of great concern to Labour, which entered Government ten years ago promising to be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".

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In his speech, Chief Supt Johnston outlines his concerns about the causes of volent crime.

He says: "Some of the biggest challenges facing the Police Service and our society today relate to violent crime; anti-social behaviour; youths out-of-control; knife crime and gun crime.

"Violent crime is a cancer that eats away at the very heart of society.

"It ruins the lives of victims and their families and causes fear and alarm in communities that are blighted by youths who are out-of-control and anti-social behaviour.

"Cancer does not flourish in a healthy body so crime should not flourish in a healthy society.

"A failed education system, family breakdown, alcohol and drug abuse, inadequate prison and probation services, an unresponsive Criminal Justice System, an entertainment industry that promotes violence and aggression and a media that glorifies in failure rather than success are all symptoms of a society in desperate need of treatment.

"To blame the Police, as many commentators are seeking to do, for this list of ills, is like blaming Accident and Emergency and the Ambulance Service for the failure to reduce cancer rates!"

Chief Supt Johnston will also unleash a withering broadside against the culture of Whitehall target-setting, warning that centralised performance targets are leading to "dysfunctional" policing and should be scrapped completely.

Forces across England and Wales are measured against more than a 100 statistical targets - the most notorious of which is the number of "offenders brought to justice" by each officer, under which handing out an on-the-spot fine for drunkenness is valued as highly as catching and jailing a major terrorist.

Chief Supt Johnston will argue that the targets have zero credibility among police themselves, and do nothing to reassure the public.

"I believe we should abolish the performance framework in its entirety," he said yesterday.

"It would allow us, the professionals, to make judgments.

"We want to reclaim policing for the police."

He said the pressure to chase often conflicting targets had made some senior officers ill from stress, and almost three quarters of borough commanders believed such targets were harming policing more than they were helping.

Earlier this year the rank-and-file Police Federation voiced similar complaints, highlighting "ludicrous" decisions driven by targets such as arresting a child in Kent for throwing cream buns at a bus.