News
The government is claiming success in its fight against football violence despite the overall number of fans being arrested last season increasing for the first time since 2003-04.
Figures released by the Home Office last week show there were 2,833 football related arrests at league matches, up from 2,673 in 2005-06. More than 3,000 known troublemakers are also subject to football banning orders.
Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker says he is encouraged by the effective use of banning orders—since 2000, 94% of individuals whose orders have expired are “assessed by the police and courts” as no longer posing a risk of football disorder. However, Paul Firth, a retired judge, says: “Mr Coaker mentions ‘the police and courts’, as if to add legitimacy to his claim that the orders are effective. What he omits is the legislative presumption in favour of long banning orders against individuals whom many of us in the courts never perceived as ‘posing a risk of football violence’ in the first place.”
The figures also show an increase in the number of arrests for missile throwing from 68 in 2005-06 to 97 in 2006-07. Firth suggests that this figure is far too low.
“I find it hard to go along with the view that whenever the number of arrests for a particular offence rises, the increase is attributable to a ‘tougher police approach’; but when the arrest figure falls, this is ‘great progress’,” he says.
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