These give young people somewhere to go at night and allow us to develop better relations with the community. But he conceded that the child safety initiative was a resource intensive scheme and required tough decisions to be made about priorities. It is an approach which is worth looking at but it very much depends on the area. I would be extremely reluctant to go down the road of legislation which imposed this approach on other forces. The Scottish Police Federation also gave its backing to child safety initiatives but warned they needed extra resources.
Any scheme can put responsibility back onto the community is better for everyone.
But for this type of initiative to work, you cannot scrimp on numbers. You need officers on the street. Without the proper resources, initiatives like this are doomed to fail in the long-term.