It is an Austin Powers "Shagadelic" night at the Paradox club near Brighton's seafront and a small group of youth workers have been handing out the very latest in drugs education flyers. "If ya know the facts about what u're on and how to keep a head, ya'll be able to have a good time and stay safe," it says, telling them that if they take ecstasy "u might be sick on coming UP and ya might not be taking what ya think u're taking" and that "Charlie cans ya wallet and ya'll wanna follow those lines til they're all gone, sniffing away a lot of money. If ya cane it, expect heavy comedowns."
It is all part of the New Labour town's "safer dancing'' project that attempts to take its drugs education message into as many of Brighton's 74 nightclubs as possible - with the approval of the police, the council and the club owners themselves. The police say it is based on the "real world recognition" that young people are going to experiment with drugs. The idea is that they know enough to make sure they don't end up in the nearby hospital's accident and emergency department.
The project is underpinned by a separate initiative to challenge the popular misconception that young people are more likely to commit crime than be the victims of crime. Brighton's crime audit confirmed that the young were the most likely to become the victims of crime. The wider aim is to ensure that Brighton's lively club culture, which is seen as a major asset to the town's "fun by the coast" tourist industry, is healthy and safe. The club area on the seafront near the main pier has been cleaned up, closed circuit television installed and closing times staggered until as late as 5am to reduce the potential for large crowds to build up.
Clubs only get a licence if they provide suitable rest rooms, free cold drinking water and prominently display leaflets about drugs misuse. The security staff on the door have to be licensed by Brighton council and are trained to know what to do about drugs if they find them when they are searching customers. It means their standards of security are higher and the door supervisors are far less likely to get involved in drug dealing themselves. It took time to persuade the club owners - some of whom were more used to the police raiding their premises - to get involved.
The "safer dancing" project is just one element in an innovative crime reduction package for Brighton, a model New Labour local authority, whose former leader and now home office minister, the energetic Lord Bassam, was directly involved in shaping Tony Blair's hardnosed approach to crime when he was the shadow home secretary.
It is a "community safety strategy" which relies on developing new partnerships between the police, the local authority, and the different parts of the local population - whether it be nightclub owners, lone women working in small shops, the gay community - and trying to persuade young people they are the most at risk of becoming victims of crime. It extends to plans to ensure that 200 bus stops in Brighton are properly lit, not just to reduce actual attacks at night but to reduce any anxiety about being attacked.
Lord Bassam believes it is an approach which has worked and may avert the coming upturn in the crime rate predicted by home office researchers, based on a sharp growth in the number of young teenage males. He says: "The police are much more switched on to the broader social policies, and the local authority, businesses and others are much more focused about what their role is in reducing crime and criminal opportunities. So I think it has worked. The police are much more signed up to the partnership approach and can see its strengths and deficiencies and the ways it can be developed."
Such a community safety approach, he believes, could prove crucial in averting a renewed upturn in the national crime rate.
"I don't accept that the crime rate has to accelerate," he says. "It is what we do that will affect the demographic factors. A younger population and more people economically active means that there will be more criminal opportunities, but how you react to the knowledge of demographic changes will obviously have an impact on crime and clear-up rates."
Linda Beanlands, Brighton's community safety officer, says initiatives such as a radio net system which links a lot of women who work on their own in small shops in the town can warn each other and the police about shoplifters and other suspicious individuals.
The strategy takes alcohol as seriously as drugs, with one of the country's only two "wet" drink crisis centres in operation just by the famous Royal Pavilion. But the strategy also extends into less visible areas of crime, such as "queerbashing" attacks on Brighton's 30,000-strong gay and lesbian community.
This part of anti-crime strategy is led by the community itself through members of a gay and lesbian community safety forum who have persuaded the police to recognise and record homophobic crime in the same way as they would racially motivated attacks. Those who fear that reporting such attacks to the police will result in them being "outed" can talk in confidence, and anonymously if necessary, to the local gay and lesbian switchboard, so the true extent of homophobic crime in the town can be uncovered.
Beanlands says these developments are being supported by a campaign in schools against bullying motivated by homophobia. The nature of this campaign is heavily circumscribed by the Section 28 ban on promoting positive images of homosexuality in schools and so it just focuses on the safety issue.
It is too early to say whether this particular package of community safety initiatives, put together earlier this year, will reduce crime in Brighton. But the underlying New Labour message appears to be that the development of such imaginative anti-crime partnerships needs constant renewal and attention if they are to remain effective.
