HOME Secretary and Blackburn MP Jack Straw today launched a new drive to tackle persistent and dangerous young thugs in the North West.

He announced an extension of special task forces targeting high-risk offenders who repeatedly commit crime.

In Manchester as part of his national Tackling Youth Crime and Disorder tour he met police, social services, probation officers and youth workers to hear about new initiatives to manage dangerous offenders in the community, rather than putting them behind bars.

He announced he is to extend a special system of bringing all the professionals dealing with youth crime issues together to discuss how to deal with particular dangerous young criminals.

The new multi-agency risk panels have been piloted for two years in Bury and Rochdale. Now they will be extended to the other eight Greater Manchester districts, including Bolton and Salford before extending them throughout the region.

This allows police, social services, probation officers and youth workers to share information about individual high risk offenders and devise strategies for dealing with them and preventing them from further criminal activity.

Mr Straw said he was pleased to extend the scheme and said: "The task of managing potentially dangerous offenders in the community is difficult, but essential.

"The probation services need and deserve the help of other agencies if their job is to be done properly.

"This initiative is a positive and proactive approach to crime pevention to help keep the public safe from high risk offenders. It is an example for others to follow."

A key part of the new strategies is the use of the electronic tagging of offenders for curfew orders, which is to be extended to Lancashire from Greater Manchester in the near future.

Visiting Securicor's electronic monitoring centre in Hulme, Mr Straw said: "It's been a successful experiment in the three areas which we have been using."

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