Policy Comparison 1 – Crime

A Note on Methodology

For the purposes of this exercise I’ve lifted the policy statements from Vote for Policies under the headings provided on that site. This means i’m not covering either Scottish or Welsh nationalists or the Northern Irish parties. Anybody who would like to add anything about their policies, please feel free to comment. I’m giving the policies word for word as they appear on that site with my own comments in italics and some lengthier thoughts below. These will be lengthy posts, but hopefully interesting. I make no pretence at objectivity and offer my views from an avowedly left of centre but not party aligned viewpoint. I’m not trying to tell you what to think, but get some discussion and debate, or at least consideration of the issues going.

For todays issue, I’ll offer the policies in alphabetical order by party:

British National Party
• Free the police and courts from the politically correct straitjacket which is stopping them from doing their jobs properly. It’s not clear what this straitjacket is or what police are being prevented from doing – perhaps beating up suspects and planting evidence?. Fairly standard right wing rhetoric to complain of political correctness gone mad, but unclear what the problem is.
• End the liberal fixation with the "rights" of criminals and replace it with concern for the rights of victims - and the right of innocent people not to become victims. It’s not about victims or criminal’s rights, but human rights and I believe a society should be judged by how it treats those in its custody regardless of what they’ve done. Besides which, I don’t see liberal as a bad word.
• Re-introduce corporal punishment for petty criminals and vandals. Yeah – more violence, that will help things.
• Restore capital punishment for paedophiles, terrorists and murderers as an option for judges in cases where their guilt is proven beyond dispute (such as with DNA or other compelling evidence). You’ve got to love the lumping together of paedophiles and terrorists as indisputable hate groups to whip up the masses (or so they hope). Not to get into the whole capital punishment debate, but I’m unsurprisingly against it – killing more people never makes things better.
• Make prisons more austere and make criminals serve their full sentences. I never realised prisons were such holiday camps at the moment.
• Use electronically tagged "chain gangs" to provide labour for projects such as coastal defences. I’m not sure what they mean by coastal defences, but it sounds like we’re simultaneously moving back to the second world war and Victorian times.
• Introduce automatic prison sentences for all repeat offenders. Now it becomes clear why they need capital punishment, to free up spaces in the overcrowded prisons for all the extra people who are going to be banged up.
• Put police back on the streets and remove their current political correctness shackles. And yet more populist rhetoric – shackles and straitjacket, never realised bondage was so poltically correct. But hang on a minute – with their chain gangs a few points back, weren’t they saying shackles were a good thing?

Conservatives
• Reduce crime and anti-social behaviour by; giving local authorities and the police much stronger powers over licensing; allowing councils to shut down permanently any shop or bar found selling alcohol to children, tax on super-strength beers, ciders and alcopops; a ban on selling alcohol below cost price; and permit local councils to charge more for late-night licences to pay for additional policing. Suddenly we’re in more sensible territory. See point A below.
• Reduce the amount of paperwork that the police have to deal with, starting by cutting the stop form entirely and reducing the burden of stop and search procedures police surveillance, so that authorisation is not needed in routine cases. Not totally sure I follow the end of this, but would have questions over the notion of making it easier and less accountable for police to stop and search.
• Replace the existing, invisible and unaccountable police authorities and make the police accountable to a directly-elected individual who will set priorities for the policing of local communities. We’ll come back to this idea again and again. See point B below.
• Redevelop the prison estate and increase prison capacity as necessary, enabling us to scrap the early release scheme. See point C below
• When offenders leave prison, they will be trained and rehabilitated by private and voluntary sector providers.
• Pilot a scheme to turn a group of public sector prisons into a Prison and Rehabilitation Trust. The main issue I have with the last two points is a philosophical disagreement that things are best managed in the private sector – I think that the governments of late 80s and 90s privatised too much, with little discernible improvement for the consumer or society as a whole. I’m yet to be convinced by the wisdom of more privatisation in the prison service.

The Green Party
• Look to establish restorative justice as a key feature of the UK criminal justice system. The primary aim will be to restore and, if necessary, improve the position of the victim and the community; the offender will be required to make amends. I have had some contact with restorative justice approaches through my work and think it is a fabulous idea that really helps to build more cohesive communities and prevent re-offending.
• Improve the design of our cities to provide safer streets and public spaces. This is another idea I like. Not just tackling crime, but creating a better environment and working towards a better society.
• Ensure universal access to high quality youth centres to provide an outlet for young people outside of school hours. Won’t totally solve youth crime or gang culture, but will help. Hey, I’m a youth worker you can’t excpect me to disagree with this.
• Bring in a Civil Law Injunction Programme (CLIP) to more effectively deal with anti-social behavior.
• Oppose any further privatisation of the prison system, as it is vital that where custody is used it is effective in preventing offenders from re-offending. Clear distinction from the tories above. Its interesting that they see privatisation as a barrier to preventing re-offending. Would like to hear more of the reasoning behind that.

Labour
• A Policing Pledge making clear what the public can expect from the police with new guarantees on response times; local crime information; monthly public meetings to set local priorities; and a pledge that your local neighbourhood team will spend at least 80% of its time on the beat in your neighbourhood. Targets and league tables and yet more bobbies back on the beat? Having more police present in the community is doubtless a good thing, but see point B for thoughts on local priorities.
• We will increase the number of families supported by Family Intervention Projects, giving intensive hard-edged support to those families that need it, to tackle problems at their root and save money. There might be some mileage in this – giving support to families early enough can help with a range of problems, but when I’ve heard details of Labour’s plan along these lines in the past they have seemed rather stigmatising and unhelpful.
• We will give local authorities the power to ban 24 hour drinking throughout a community in the interests of local people, combined with a vigorous crackdown on alcohol-related disorder. See point A.
• We will utilise the best technology in the fight against crime; giving people more of a say over where CCTV is used in their area and protecting the public by ensuring the right people are on our DNA database. Both the surveillance society and DNA database are controversial topics. Not sure how much safer they make me feel. Presumably the right people to have on a DNA database are the ones who are going to commit a crime, but how do you know this in advance?
• A National Victims' Service guaranteeing all victims of crime and anti-social behaviour referred by the police more clear, comprehensive and dedicated support, for the first time available seven days a week. Sounds like a good idea.
• Tough and effective sentences for the guilty alongside action to tackle re-offending, focussing on education and work and ending the early release scheme through provision of new prison places as part of the largest ever building programme. Slightly more detail on rehabilitation which sounds ok. See point C below.
• Giving local people more of a say in how offenders on Community Payback schemes repay the community for their crimes and enable people in every area to vote online for which local community projects they wish to see worked on to increase confidence in justice being done. There’s something quite attractive in this idea as a weaker echo of a restorative justice approach, but I can’t help feeling there’s also a dose of cynically trying to tap into the whole reality TV vote craze with the online voting.

Liberal Democrats
• This Party has decided to prioritise a limited commitment to increasing police numbers by 3,000 over the course of a Parliament. More police is a good thing, if they’re doing the right things.
• This Party will give far more power to police authorities who should have the sole right to appoint the Chief Constable, set local policing priorities, agree standards, determine budgets. Less government interference – again, should be a good thing.
• We would give local people a real say over their police force through the direct election of police authorities by fair votes. See point B
• Police command units should be aligned with such council boundaries to encourage dialogue and co-operation between the commander and the council. Again sounds fairly sensible.
• There should be an urgent review of whether the very restrictive terms and conditions for police officers - a single point of entry into the force, 30 or 35-year lifetime employment and pay determined by seniority - are still appropriate. The police contract must be modernised. Would need to hear more on why and what the effects of this would be.
• This Party proposes annual fitness tests for police officers. Those who fail should be moved to a desk role or civilian position in the force. Might not be the most popular measure with the police, but I can see the reason behind it. I think the fire brigade already do something similar.
• Ministers should always respect and implement in full the recommendations of the independent Police Arbitration Tribunal.
• A renewed effort to cut unnecessary police paper-work, and to replace form-filling with voice-recognition technology, hand-held computers, and civilian keyboard operators who could take details over the radio. The need to reduce paperwork is a common theme in several of these policies. There are at least some suggestions here as to how to achieve that without letting up on procedures.

UK Independence Party
• This Party believes that only through EU withdrawal and the repeal of the Human Rights Act, with its Continental model of States granting rights rather than the Anglo Saxon model of natural rights, can sensible crime fighting measures be taken. You’ve got to admire the effort they’ve gone to in order to link crime policy with EU withdrawal. I’ve got to say that I get extremely uncomfortable when people start talking about withdrawing Human Rights legislation though.
• Deport radical Imams back to countries where they are wanted for trial in line with existing bilateral prisoner exchange or new treaties. Hmm – if there are existing treaties and they are wanted for trial, wouldn’t they already be being deported unless there was a good reason not to? Or is this policy actually a way of signalling we’re tough on Muslims without contravening Race equality legislation?
• Use treason laws to prosecute British citizens loyal to those we are at war with. Surely they would need to actually do something wrong or conspire against the UK, not just be loyal to another country. Could be a similar move to policy above.
• We strongly oppose the ID card scheme as being illiberal, intrusive, ineffective and wasteful. I actually agree with this.
• Abolish the ineffective and token Anti Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs). And this.
• This Party regards the lack of youth centres and other outlets for legitimate activity as a problem that exacerbates the juvenile crime situation. Well, this makes three points in a row.
• Give schools the choice of whether or not to use corporal punishment. Oh, and they were on such a good streak – I don’t think beating children teaches them anything other than fear and violence.
• Allow more democratic control over the police force, with directly elected Chief Constables and/or police boards. Sounds vaguely familiar from somewhere... See point B below.

Further Thoughts

A) Alcohol and Crime. Labour and the Tories make big points about the link between alcohol and crime. It is certainly a factor in a lot of anti-social behaviour. The measures proposed might be different, but that’s really a superficial difference to the overall point of tougher licensing making our communities safer and better. Which is a fair point as far as it goes. But there seems to be an absence in these policies of addressing more hidden issues: surprisingly there’s nothing about drugs and the amount of crime that creates in order for people to feed habits, not even a mention of a methadone programme or banning legal highs. Is this a tacit acknowledgement from politicians that they can’t win the war on drugs? Other things I might like to see addressed are domestic abuse, violence against women, people trafficking.

B) Directly elected police authorities and local priorities. There seems to be a general consensus between the three main parties and UKIP that policing priorities should be set locally with less interference from the government. There’s some merit in this. Government’s are too focussed on winning elections and thus need to be seen to be doing something, leading to constant new initiatives to tackle the issue of the month, which will constantly divert time a resources one way then another rather than establishing long term solutions, or enabling initiatives which are starting to work to keep going. So, so far, so sensible. The tories, Lib-Dems and UKIP go on to suggest directly elected police authorities as the solution, but doesn’t this turn the police authorities into politicians seeking re-election every 4-5 years and therefore take us back to square one. In addition I would also advocate that local accountability is balanced with a more strategic overview. Understandably, local residents are usually most concerned about the issues they see – at the more trivial end this is dog-shit on the pavements, and the more serious end the kinds of issues addressed in these policies – anti-social behaviour, drunkenness, youth crime, etc... but there are other issues which are just as big a problem and maybe have a more negative effect on society which are more hidden, like domestic abuse. Its important that these aren’t lost sight of.

C) Prison over-crowding and early release. The other concensus is that there is not enough space in prisons and the early-release system needs to be stopped. Solutions range from building new prisons (Labour), expanding existing ones and using the private sector (Tory) and bringing back capital punishment (you know who). My main problem with this, is believing this as a priority from the parties who introduced early release to start with and have had every opportunity to invest in prisons, but have failed to do so.

Conclusions.

If I had to rank these policies for me personally it would be as follows:

1. Green – some genuinely interesting and innovative ideas with a wider focus to a more cohesive society.
2. Lib-Dems – to my eyes seems the most practical of the similar policies from the 3 main parties
3. Labour
4. Conservatives – Labour wins out purely on the privatisation issue.
5. UKIP – a rather schizophrenic policy combining rather liberal ideas with extreme right, borderline racist.
6. BNP – Cross the borderline. Extreme right rhetoric with no substance.

Well, thats what I think. If you’ve waded through all this, Well done. But do take the time to let me know what you think too. Debate is at the heart of a healthy democracy.