A NEW initiative to tackle alcohol-fuelled crime across Hampshire will be launched today.

The probation service and the charity, Crime Reduction Initiatives, have joined forces to create a new service to wean people off alcohol.

Drink is a factor in some three-quarters of all violent crime in the county by offenders who receive community sentences, according to the latest figures.

While most crime is reducing, drink-fuelled violence is growing.

The Alcohol Treatment Requirement Service is the first of its kind in the south-east.

Hampshire probation staff have run treatment programmes for excessive drinkers since a ground-breaking structured course in the early 1970s.

However the new county-wide service, costing £250,000 a year, will help more people than in the past, with some 1,500 a year set to be assessed for treatment.

It will enable courts throughout Hampshire and the Isle of Wight to impose an alcohol treatment requirement (ATR) for an offender with a history of excessive drinking associated with crime.

Offenders will be required to have at least six sessions with a trained advisor, working through a tailored programme.

Figures released by the Hampshire probation service reveal most offences of violence are committed by people with alcohol problems.

The figures are: Southampton, 70 per cent (210 out of 302 violent offences); Newport, Isle of Wight, 76 per cent (48 out of 76); Basingstoke, 79 per cent (45 out of 57); and Portsmouth, 66 per cent (71 out of 107).