Home Secretary Yvette Cooper recognised the unique challenges faced in crimes against rural communities, as the second reading of the Crime and Policing Bill progressed through parliament on Monday (March 10).
In the debate, Cooper said that often organised gangs are behind incidents in more remote locations.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department also outlined plans within the Bill to introduce a standalone offence for assaulting a shopworker, introduce Respect Orders, and to scrap the £200 threshold for shop theft offences. Also she said the government would allocate £200 million for the next financial year on recruiting 13,000 more neighbourhood police and police community support officers to tackle crimes against the community.
The Bill will also introduce interventions to help addicts into treatment in a bid to end the cycle of reoffending.
The ACS, which welcomes the progress of the Bill, revealed earlier this week the extent of crime committed against the convenience sector, estimating a record-breaking 6.2million incidents a year of shop theft.
