London gets cashback’ from criminals’ seized loot

COMMUNITIES across crime-ridden East London are to benefit from cashback’ from assets seized from criminals who’ve been locked up behind bars. The public is getting a say on which projects they want the loot spent on.

By Mike Brooke

COMMUNITIES across crime-ridden East London are to benefit from cashback’ from assets seized from criminals who've been locked up behind bars.

The public is getting a say on which projects they want the loot spent on.

People can have their say by online voting, which opens today (September 7) on the London Criminal Justice Board website and closes 5pm on September 18.

The Community Cashback scheme uses recovered criminal assets totalling �4 million across Britain this year alone.

Half the shortlisted projects in the capital are in East London. These include seven on the Tower Hamlets shortlist, Shaddywood crime reduction’, Tackling Anti Social Behaviour’, Teesdale & Hollybush youth, Victim Focus and Get Connected. Also shortlisted is Changing Places Together’ project covering Tower Hamlets and neighbouring Hackney, Newham, Waltham Forest and Greenwich.

Others include Newham’s Theatre Watch, Waltham Forest’s Safer Homes and Barking & Dagenham’s Big Deal Peer Education projects and youth theatre.

The London Criminal Justice Board is to assess the shortlisted projects after the voting and submit a selected few to the Office of Criminal Justice Reform.