VANDALS are to be caught out by their own handiwork in a move to crack down on graffiti.
Police and council officials are to set up a dedicated website where vandals' "tags" will be displayed with a public plea to help identify the culprits.
Renfrewshire Council has built up a database of photographs of graffiti throughout the area, including Paisley, Renfrew and Johnstone.
It is estimated that the problem is costing the local authority around £150,000 a year to clean up.
The council removes all graffiti which appears on its own buildings, including schools and council offices, and will also remove racist, sexist or sectarian slogans on any building.
Often "tags" are pseudonyms which are known in the vandal's community and police hope local people annoyed with the eyesores will name the culprits.
Inspector John Carlin, of Strathclyde Police, said: "Vandalism has a direct effect on our communities. Tagging is a specific form of graffiti that, in addition to causing defacement of property, in some cases can raise the levels of fear in a community.
"It is important we recognise that it is an offence and we will continue to report those who are caught tagging on any property."
Councillor Brian Lawson, convener of Renfrewshire Council's housing & community safety board, said: "Graffiti is one of those crimes that is regarded as harmless by those who do it, but in reality graffiti blights an area, is intimidating, often offensive and expensive to clean up.
"We are asking the public to turn graffiti detective and help us put names against the tags that scar Renfrewshire."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article