Female drink offences soar

The number of women being arrested for drunk and disorderly (D&D) offences has soared by up to 1,000 per cent in parts of Britain.

Welcome back .Free drinks, special offers in club, price happy hours, it's all feeling a massive increase in binge drinking amongst young women. New figures obtained by this program show the number of women arrested for being drunk and disorderly has soared by up to 1000% in some places. Now one chief cause of all called for a complete ban on its county drinks and alcohol advertising in an effort to tackle it all. Our North England Correspondent Nick Martin has been out on the streets of New Castle upon time to see just how bad it gets.

It's only a Wednesday night, but the bars and the night clubs are filling up. This is New Castle ,the city with a reputation for a good night-out. Most of people here will have a harmless midweek drink. But it won't turn out that way for others. Figures obtained by Channel 4 News have revealed a change in women's behavior when it comes to a night on the tiles. They appeared to show that women are getting into more trouble with the police than ever before. We asked all the police forces in the UK to give us figures on the number of women they had arrested for being drunk and disorderly in the past five years. 38 forces responded to the survey, 21 of them had directly comparable figures.The West Midlands recorded the biggest rise--arrests there have got from just 59 in 2003, 2004 to more than 10 times that this year when 731 women were arrested .In Gwent South Wales there has been a 7-fold increase over five years from 28 arrests to 190. Leicestershire recorded just 14 arrests in 2003/4, but the most recent figure showed that the number has risen to nearly 80. Over Cheshire the earliest figure comes from 2005/6 when 85 women were arrested.And in just 3 years,that number has more than doubled to 200. And in Northumbria,the region with the most arrests each year, the number has increased by nearly 700, 1414 in 2003/4 to more than 2000 this year.

Here in New Castle, for example, the police are concerned.They know and have them for some period of time now that womenn are drinking as much if not more than men on the average night out. But what these figures appear to show is that more and more women aren't leaving and going home in a taxi or on the late bus. But in a police van like this; the police say they want changes; the pops say they've made those changes, and the contest just wants another drink, it's a kind of stalemate.

I would not rely on, oh on the private sector just self-regulate prices. I think there should be some emendation around prices that takes it or makes it extremely difficult to drink to access. I also think that the advertising on alcohol should simply not be allowed.

It is midnight and signs that some have had too much to drink. The leisure industry denies that it is wholly responsible for this convert behavior, but accepts that drinks are cheaper because competition is higher.

We are seeing many more people arriving on our businesses already drunk, having consumed alcohol at home. It's a fact we have to face this. The government asked us to face it. The police authorities have to face it. And We have to face it. It's an industry that supermarkets are selling alcohol below local price and this is fueling the problem.

The fact is that no one really knows who is fueling the problem of excessive drinking on Britain streets. But the figures appear to show that women are playing a bigger part than they ever have before.

They mark around the big market and in the statement tight the home office told us responsible drinking is something we must all take responsibility for and losing control through excessive drinking is no excuse for anti-social behavior and violence. Overall, alcohol-related violence has fallen by around a third since 1995 and we are not complacent. We are launching this summer a multi-million pound publicity campaign to help prevent the harms that irresponsible drinking can cause to communities and individuals.