Police 'focus on soft crime'

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A pamphlet from right-wing think-tank Civitas said police and the Government risked alienating the public by concentrating on "easy-to-deal-with offending".

The pamphlet by journalist Harriet Sergeant accused police of treating incidents as crimes when they would previously have been regarded as innocuous, because it helps meet their targets.

Many officers are expected to complete a certain number of "sanction detections" a month, either by charging, cautioning or fining an "offender".

Arresting or fining a normally law-abiding person for a piffling offence is a good way of achieving this target and pleasing the Home Office, the booklet said.

"Not only do the police seem intent on criminalising those whose offences, if they can be regarded as offences at all, are trivial," it claimed.

"They are accused of concentrating on easy-to-deal with offending like speeding, while the real criminals seem to be getting away with it."

The pamphlet highlighted one case in which a 19-year-old foreign student was arrested, detained for five hours and cautioned for holding open the door of a lift in a London Underground station.

"This story ... reveals the bizarre stratagems created by the target culture," it said.

"In a city where knife crime is exploding and the public are crying out for more police on the streets, three officers are tied up for half the night arresting a young man for holding a lift door open with his foot."