Men could be asked by police to stay off their local streets if a murderer is on the loose, the Victims' Commissioner for England and Wales has suggested.
Dame Vera Baird QC said there was a 'real vacuum of police action in the fight against violence against women' following the murder of Sabina Nessa, 28.
Primary school teacher Miss Nessa was killed in a park in Kidbrooke, South East London, on September 17 and her body was found covered in leaves the next day.
Dame Vera has been critical of the police response following the murder and spoke about it during a fringe event at the Labour Party conference in Brighton on Sunday.
She said the Reclaim The Streets movement started in the 1970s at the time of the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, when women rejected advice to stay indoors.
Former Labour MP Dame Vera Baird QC is the Victims' Commissioner for England and Wales
Primary school teacher Sabina Nessa, 36, was killed in a park in Kidbrooke, South East London, on September 17 and her body was found covered in leaves the next day
According to The Times, Dame Vera said: 'If you remember that Reclaim the Streets started when the Yorkshire Ripper was at large in the late Seventies…
'The point of that was because the police told women in the North to keep off the streets to be safe from him - when, of course, we thought they should have been telling men to keep off the streets so what he was doing might be a bit more visible.
Dame Vera said the Reclaim The Streets movement started at the time of the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, in the 1970s
'It strikes me that very little has changed.'
The killing of Miss Nessa has triggered an outpouring of anger and grief as MPs and campaigners have demanded that the streets
