Our Nation's Future - Criminal Justice System
23 June 2006
We need to look beyond the headlines to build a consensus on how to deal with problems of crime, immigration and security, Tony Blair has said.
Parts of this transcript may have been edited
Read the speech in full:
For me in many ways, this is the culmination of a personal journey. I was brought up in a legal household, studied law, became a barrister with the traditional lawyer's views of issues to do with civil liberties and crime.
I then became an M.P. and at the same time was living in London, in the inner city. I saw first hand in London and in Sedgefield through my constituents the changing nature of our society and of law and order. The first article I wrote on ASB was in the Times in 1988. I volunteered to be Shadow Home Secretary after the 1992 election. I always remember John Smith saying to me when I told him the portfolio I wanted: "are you sure?" with that John Smith look that translated as: "are you out of your mind?"
The reason I wanted it, was not just because I thought it would be politically interesting, as indeed it turned out to be; nor even because I wanted to change radically the Labour Party's stance on it, though I certainly did; but because I had become, through personal experience in London, in my constituency - the inner city and rural England - convinced that we were witnessing profound social and cultural change and that the legal establishment I had been brought up in and the political establishment I had joined, were completely out of touch with this, didn't understand it and certainly weren't dealing with it.
Nine years on as P.M and many pieces of legislation later, I find myself in a curious and not entirely comfortable position: attacked both for failing to be tough enough; and for being authoritarian; and sometimes by the same people on both grounds simultaneously.
The situation is complicated still further by the fact that, in Government, it is true that crime has fallen. Indeed we are the first post-war British Government that has seen crime fall during its term of office. In addition, the asylum system that was in virtual chaos when we arrived in 1997, is on any objective basis, substantially better run now than then. But unsurprisingly, given the publicity, no-one would believe it. The truth is there have been improvements, there has been progress, but the gap between what the public expects and what the public sees is still there.
And the political and legal establishment is still in denial. I know what large numbers of such people believe. They believe we are on a populist bandwagon, the media whips everyone up into a frenzy, and if only everyone calmed down and behaved properly the issue would go away. It may well be true that politicians can be overly populist; it may be true that, as I know more than most, the media can distort; but actually neither reason is the reason why the public are anxious. The public are anxious for a perfectly good reason: they think they play fair and play by the rules and they see too many people who don't, getting away with it. By the public I don't mean the "hang 'em and flog 'em" brigade. I mean ordinary, decent law-abiding folk, who believe in rehabilitation as well as punishment, understand there are deep-rooted causes of crime and know that no Government can eliminate it. But they think the political and legal establishment are out of touch on the issue and they are right.
So when we introduced ASB legislation, it was ridiculed and in part watered down. Each piece of asylum and criminal justice legislation has been diluted, sometimes fundamentally in the Houses of Parliament. Each law on terrorism has been attacked, in one case as posing more threat to the country's safety than the terrorism itself. Sometimes the very parts of the political system most vociferous in their demand that we act on the issues have been the most determined in their resistance to the measures taken.
So here we are today with the Home Office, understandably, under siege. And, of course, I don't say, for a moment that mistakes haven't been made, that competence or lack of it has not been a serious complaint. But I do say that it is a complete delusion to think that simply by changing Ministers, civil servants or practices, the gap I referred to earlier, is going to be bridged. It isn't. I have learnt many things in 9 years of Government and that is one of them.
I have also learnt something else. I have come to the conclusion that part of the problem in this whole area has been the absence of a proper, considered intellectual and political debate about the nature of liberty in the modern world. In other words, crime, immigration, security - because of the emotions inevitably stirred, the headlines that naturally scream, the multiplicity of the problems raised - desperately, urgently need a rational debate, from first principles and preferably unrelated to the immediate convulsion of the moment.
What's more, I believe we can get to a sensible, serious and effective answer to these issues and build a consensus in favour of them. But we can't do it unless the argument is won at a far more fundamental level than hitherto.
I want to trace the combination of factors that brings us to where we find ourselves today - to a criminal justice system that needs to re-establish the public consent on which it will, ultimately, depend. In the latest BCS, 80% of the British people thought the system respected the rights of the accused. Only 35% said they were confident that the system meets the needs of victims.
Why are people so much more worried about crime? The answer to that is easy.
As the 20th Century opened the number of crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales per head of population were at its lowest since the first statistics were published in 1857.
By 1997 the number of crimes recorded by the police was 57 times greater than in 1900. Even allowing for population growth it was 29 times higher. Theft had risen from 2 offences per 1,000 people in 1901 to 55.7 in 1992.
Over the past 50 years, the detection rate almost halved. 47% of all crimes were detected in 1951 but only 26% in 2004/5. Conviction rates fell too, to 74% in 2004/5 from 96% in 1951.
This growth, in the second half of the 20th century, was historically unprecedented. The reasons are very complex. They are social, intellectual and systemic.
The communities of the Britain before the Second World War are relics to us now. The men worked in settled industrial occupations. Women were usually at home. Social classes were fixed and defining of identity. People grew up, went to school and moved into work in their immediate environs.
Geographical and social mobility has loosened the ties of home. The family structure has changed. The divorce rate increased rapidly. Single person households are now common. The demography changed: the high-crime category of young men between 15 and 24 expanded. The disciplines of informal control - imposed in the family and in schools - are less tight than they were.
The moral underpinning of this society has not, of course, disappeared entirely. That is why our anti-social behaviour legislation, for example, has proved so popular - because it is manifestly on the side of the decencies of the majority. It deliberately echoes some of the moral categories - shame, for example - that were once enforced informally.
There was, at the same time, something both comforting and suffocating about these communities. But they were very effective at reproducing informal codes of conduct and order. They contained a sense of fairness and honour, what Orwell habitually referred to as "decency".
Now, this fixed order of community has gone. Patterns of employment are different - women are more likely to work, nobody can expect to stay in a single job for life. Deference has declined. A more prosperous nation is a more demanding nation. Prosperity increases the opportunity for crime and makes it more lucrative.
But in a sense we still live in the shadow of the Victorians. Criminal justice reform was, along with public health, the great progressive cause of the times. The capricious savagery of sentencing policy made routine victims of the poor. There was, in practice, no observed precept of equality before the law. The conditions in prison were a living hell.
The problem with the reform movement was not that it failed. On the contrary it succeeded. And, out of the great achievements of 19th century penal and legal reform, flowed an unintended consequence: the ideal of being a liberal in this field became associated, subtly and insidiously, with ensuring the fair treatment of suspects and criminals, detached from an equivalent concern with victims.
This was abetted by the intellectual convulsions on the academic and political left about the causes and consequences of crime. We got into the untenable position of arguing that recidivism was an entirely structural affair. The millions of people who suffered the deprivation of the 1930s depression without resorting to crime give the lie to the thesis. It had the effect of deleting individual responsibility: you might be a criminal but it was never truly your fault.
The political right believed the mirror-image fallacy. Criminality, for them, was entirely a matter of individual wickedness.
Of course both positions can be true, sometimes at the same time. In retrospect, the argument looks sterile, silly even. New Labour finally arrived at what has now became the conventional position, summed up in the phrase: "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime."
In reality, what is happening is simply another facet of globalisation and a changing world. Fixed communities go. The nuclear family changes. Mass migration is on the march. Prosperity means most people have something worth stealing. Drugs means more people are prepared to steal. Organised crime which trafficks in drugs and people make money. Violence, often of a qualitatively as well as quantatively different sort than anything before, accompanies it. Then there is the advent of this new phenomenon of global terrorism based on a perversion of Islam.
As a result of the scale and nature of this seismic change, the challenges faced by the criminal justice and immigration systems have grown exponentially, not in a small way but in a way that, frankly, mocks a system built not for another decade but another age. So we end up fighting 21st century problems with 19thcentury solutions.
In case anyone believes this is a uniquely British problem, I can tell you that at last Thursday's European Council meeting, the main topic of debate was precisely this. Every country from Malta and Spain in the south to the northern point of Europe faced the same issue with the same intensity and the same anxiety as to what to do.
And the reason that it raises such profoundly disturbing questions about liberty in the modern world, is this. Because we care, rightly, about people's civil liberties, we have, traditionally, set our face against summary powers; against changing the burden of proof in fighting crime; against curbing any of the procedures and rights used by defence lawyers; against sending people back to potentially dangerous countries; against any abrogation of the normal, full legal process.
But here's the rub. Without summary powers to attack ASB - ASBO's, FPN's, dispersal and closure orders on crack houses, seizing drug dealers assets - it won't be beaten. That's reality. And the proof is that until we started to introduce this legislation, it wasn't beaten and even now it can be a struggle. The scale of what we face is such that whatever the theory, in practice, in real every day street life it can't be tackled without such powers.
Without the ability to force suspected organised criminals to open up their bank accounts, disclose transactions, prove they came by their assets lawfully, you can forget hitting organised crime hard. It won't happen.
There is no point in saying to an overworked immigration officer: deport this foreign criminal to country X, if country X is dangerous; because at present the courts won't allow it and the officer is met with an army of lawyers and a system stacked against him. In theory, he might, just might be able to win it eventually. In practice he'll look to remove other people. Take an even harder case: failed asylum seekers. We were being hammered for not removing enough failed asylum seekers, even though we remove roughly three times the number of the previous government. Then came the Zimbabwe case. The court held that even failed claimants, if they claimed to be from Zimbabwe couldn't be returned. And we got hammered for even contemplating such a thing by the very politicians who previously had been complaining about removals. But what happened? In the month after that case, asylum claims from Zimbabwe rose 50 per cent. In other words, because of the way modern mass migration works, the moment the system received a signal it reacted and numbers immediately went up.
Or you can say - many did - the right to trial by jury is inalienable and even the most serious and complex fraud cases, taking months, sometimes years to try, must be done that way. Fine: but the reality is a large proportion of such cases collapse or are never brought.
Here is the point. Each time someone is the victim of ASB, of drug related crime; each time an illegal immigrant enters the country or a perpetrator of organised fraud or crime walks free, someone else's liberties are contravened, often directly, sometimes as part of wider society. It's no use saying that in theory there should be no conflict between the traditional protections for the suspect and the rights of the law-abiding majority because, as a result of the changing nature of crime and society, there is, in practice, such a conflict; and every day we don't resolve it, by rebalancing the system, the consequence is not abstract, it is out there, very real on our streets.
Let me give an even more pointed example. At present, we can't deport people from Britain even if we suspect them of plotting terrorism unless we are sure that, if deported, they won't suffer abuse on their return home. In fact, even if we put them through a form of judicial process overseen by a High Court judge or even convict them, we cannot do it. As a result of what I announced last year, we are now seeking to deport people from various countries; but I say seeking, because the test cases in court are only now being decided. I agree the human rights of these individuals, if considered absolute, would militate against their deportation. But surely if they aren't deported and conduct acts of terrorism, their victims' rights have been violated by the failure to deport. And even if they don't commit such an act or they don't succeed in doing so, the time, energy, effort, resource in monitoring them puts a myriad of other essential task at risk and therefore the rights of the wider society.
This is not an argument about whether we respect civil liberties or not; but whose take priority. It is not about choosing hard line policies over an individual's human rights. It's about which human rights prevail. In making that decision, there is a balance to be struck. I am saying it is time to rebalance the decision in favour of the decent, law-abiding majority who play by the rules and think others should too.
Of course the danger is that we end up with rough justice, a danger even now when we use summary powers to close crack houses or seize the assets of suspects. It is exactly to guard against such danger that the rebalancing has to be done with the utmost care and scrutiny. But the brute reality is that just as with rights, rough justice works both ways too. There is not rough justice but rough injustice when neighbourhoods are terrorised by gangs and the system is not capable of protecting them.
These questions are fundamental, difficult and immensely controversial.
Unsurprisingly, there is a strong desire to escape their fundamental nature by taking refuge in simple explanations and remedies. One is repeal of the Human Rights Act. There are issues to do with the way the Act is interpreted and its case law, which we are examining. But let me be very clear. These problems existed long before the Human Rights Act. Every modern democracy has human rights legislation: and in any event the British Human Rights Act is merely the incorporation into British law of the provisions of the ECHR, to which we have been bound for over half a century. Besides, in the ECHR, there are countervailing provisions to do with public safety and national security which would permit precisely the more balanced approach I advocate. In addition, of course, Parliament has the right expressly to override the Human Rights Act. And it's not the existence of the Human Rights Act or the ECHR that has made Parliament behave in the way it has.
Another false solution is to focus all the attention on sentencing. Again there are issues to do with sentencing guidelines, like the automatic reductions for guilty pleas and aspects of early release, which again we are looking at. But the introduction of the Sentencing Guidelines Council has brought greater consistency. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 does allow indeterminate sentences for violent and sexual offences, ie life can mean life and Courts are using them. Prison sentences are longer - I mean actual time in prison. More people are in prison. Prison places have expanded by 19,000 since 1997 and are due to expand still further. Also, once more, let me be clear. Judicial independence is a foundation stone of the British Constitution and our Judges are rightly respected and admired for their quality the world over.
I am afraid the issue is far more profound: it is the culture of political and legal decision-making that has to change, to take account of the way the world has changed. It is not this or that judicial decision; this or that law. It is a complete change of mindset, an avowed, articulated determination to make protection of the law-abiding public the priority and to measure that not by the theory of the textbook but by the reality of the street and community in which real people live real lives.
So what would need to happen to bring about such a revolution in thinking? I would identify four strands of work.
The first is to put in place laws that properly reflect the reality. There is a myth that we have legislated 50 times, the problem still exists, ergo we don't need more laws. I disagree. These laws have made a difference. The residents I spoke to on Southmead Estate here in Bristol yesterday complained bitterly about aspects of the Court system, to which I shall return in a moment.
However, it was only by dint of the ASB laws that they were able to take action at all and though it took too long, in the end the offending families had indeed been removed. Likewise, there is no way we would have cut asylum claims from over 80,000 a few years back to just over 20,000 now and be removing more unfounded claims than we receive, without the laws passed, again in the teeth of fierce opposition, in 2002. And tell me how many senior police and those working for the SOCA would want to be without the Proceeds of Crime Act.
Laws have made a real difference, but they have not been clear or tough enough. We need to do an audit of where the gaps are, in the laws that are necessary. Just in the past few months, from talking to people and police, I can think of examples where such gaps exist. For example, the powers to arrest and bring immediately to court those who break their undertakings to have treatment for drug addiction. We need swifter, summary powers to deal with ASB. The limits on the seizure of assets of suspects need to be changed. We need to use the law to send strong signals that those who break bail or drug treatment orders or community sentences will get quickly and appropriately punished. And we will need to reflect carefully on the outcome of the pending cases on deportation and if necessary act.
The second strand is that along with the right laws, we need systems capable of administering them. The court system has improved over the years. But let me be honest: it is not what the public expects or wants. Again, rather than blaming this or that court official, we need a more profound look at why they don't operate as they should. The CJS treats all cases in a similar way. But they aren't similar. There is a strong case for handling different types of crime in different ways. We are developing now the concept of community courts, like the ones in Liverpool and Salford and specialist ASB, drugs and domestic violence courts - but these are the exception not the rule. But what is necessary is, piece by piece, to analyse where the shortcomings are and put in place the systems to remove them. Time and again I hear from angry victims and witnesses of how cases are dragged out, constant adjournments, ineffective trials through the non-attendance of the defendant; and for people facing violence or ASB in their street, every day, every week, every month they are having to live with the people who are making their lives hell.
There are already change programmes taking place in the SOCA to handle organised crime, in IND and in the new prison and probation service. And of course in the IT programmes to join the system up. But, as John Reid has rightly indicated, we need to use the current furore about the Home Office to go back over each and every part of them to make sure they will be fit for purpose.
This brings me to the third strand: focus on the offender, not just the offence. If an offender has a drug problem, or a mental health problem, and most do, then sentencing him for the offence will only do temporary good if the offending behaviour is not dealt with. Now, again, work has begun on this. Those arrested are now tested for drugs. Drug treatment is being rapidly expanded, in some places doubled or tripled. But the truth is each suspect and then offender should be tracked throughout the system, given not just a sentence but an appropriate process for sorting their life out; and if they don't, be followed up, brought back to court. Local authorities need to have the powers to take account of such behaviour when assessing service entitlements. The system needs to share the information. The role of the NOMS will be utterly crucial. In other words, there is wholesale system reform that has to take place.
And here is where the fourth strand of work is relevant. Whenever I talk of public service reform, then, not unnaturally, people think of the NHS and education. But many of the same principles apply to the CJS. It is a public service, or at least should be. Its role is to protect the public by dispensing justice. Yet of all the public services, it is the one which, the more the public is in contact with it, the less satisfied they are by their experience. Capturing and disseminating best practice; using different and new providers, for example from the voluntary sector, in the management of offenders; giving the victim a right to be heard in relation to sentencing, at least for the most violent crimes; breaking down the monopoly, "one size fits all" court provision: all of these things should have a place in a modern CJS fighting the modern reality of crime.
It is on the detail of all this that John will focus at the end of July, but one other point remains vital. In none of this have I forgotten the causes of crime. I believe passionately that a person with a stake in society, something to look forward to, an opportunity to reach out for, is far more likely to be a responsible member of society than someone without such a life chance. We have introduced Sure Start; the New Deal; increased Child Benefit; are spending a lot of money on innercity regeneration and all to good effect. It's not wasted, it's making a real difference to real lives. I also know that what happens in prison matters deeply and that the pressure on the prison population is a real problem. Moreover, the blunt reality is that, at least in the short and medium term, the measures proposed will mean an increase in prison places. How prison works is an essential component.
All of these things - from help to poorer families to rehabilitation in prison - are crucial to fighting crime and in dwelling on the issues to do with the CJS I don't mean to imply otherwise.
But even in tackling the causes of crime, we come back to some unpalatable choices about liberty and security. The "hardest to reach" families are often the ones we need to reach most. People know what it's like to live on the same estate as the family from hell. Imagine what it's like to be brought up in one. We need far earlier intervention with some of these families, who are often socially excluded and socially dysfunctional. That may mean before they offend; and certainly before they want such intervention. But in truth, we can identify such families virtually as their children are born. The power to intervene is another very tricky area; but again, on the basis of my experience, the normal processes and the programmes of help we have rightly introduced, won't do it.
So we come back to the central conundrum. Most people would accept there is a gap between what the public expects in terms of society, the behaviour of others, and the CJS regulating or dealing with such behaviour; and what the public gets. Our lives have changed in so many ways for the better. But in one part of modern life, people feel we have regressed and that is in the respect we show for each other. Largely, at any rate, we have left behind deference and many forms of discrimination and prejudice. But respect on the basis of equality is something at the root of any civic society. It is what makes a community tick. It is what gives life order and allows us to pursue our aspirations and ambitions with peace of mind.
We won't achieve this by nostalgia by hankering after the past. It's gone. We will do it by recognising the reality of the modern world and the modern forces attacking such order and peace of mind. Such is the changing nature of that world and the ferocity of those forces, we need to adjust, to reclaim the system and thereby the street for the law-abiding majority. That means not disrespecting civil liberties but re-assessing what respect for them means today and placing a far higher priority, in what is a conflict of rights, on the rights of those who keep the law rather than break it. This is not the argument of the lynch mob or of people who are indifferent to convicting the innocent, it is simply a reasonable and rational response to a problem that is as much one of modernity as of liberty. But such a solution will not happen without a radical change in political and legal culture and that is the case I make today.
Read the Q and A
Chairman:
Thank you very much indeed Prime Minister. We now have the opportunity for members of the public and local organisations, not the press I am afraid, to ask questions of the Prime Minister and the panel. I will take the questions in groups of three, and the Prime Minister's time is limited so I would ask that you make the questions as short as possible. If you could say your name and if appropriate your organisation. And I would like to remind you that the issue for the day is the criminal justice system and I think it is only right and proper that questions should focus on that particular issue.
Question:
I would like to talk about car crime. It seems to have changed recently, I don't get my car broken into quite so often now, but instead people come up the street and throw paint stripper over it, and they tip paint upon it and they sometimes even take the wheels. And I don't actually live in a very deprived area of Bristol, it is just the fact that people tend to drive around the area and try and create as much mischief as possible. I actually have to lie awake at night listening out for noises thinking about is that my car being attacked again, and the same happens to my partner's car as well. And when I have actually called the authorities on to this they have told me that this is a matter between you and your insurance company, and I think that is completely unacceptable and I think there should be more deterrents for people like myself who have to earn every penny and pay for everything and pay their way, that we are actually protected by the authorities and that they do care about it, and that there are the deterrents in force to stop people actually doing this and that the authorities do take it seriously. The attitude I have had from the authorities is the fact, oh it's high jinks.
Question:
I established the Innocents Project in this university and I am coordinator of the Innocents network UK. I think I actually agree that the public expect a criminal justice system that convicts the guilty, but the public also expect a criminal justice system that acquits the innocent. The reason why we have got Innocents projects emerging in this country is because of the limits of the existing criminal justice system and the number of victims of that system that aren't being recognised or considered in this debate. There are a growing number of miscarriages of justice. Every single day in this country 25 people overturn a wrongful conviction through a successful appeal, there are 5,000 each year, and reforms such as the Criminal Justice Act 2003 will do nothing to reduce that number with wiping away a whole raft of safeguards against wrongful convictions, like double jeopardy, the introduction of hearsay evidence, revealing previous criminal records and so on. My question is this: are the innocent now expendable in the fight to ensure that all guilty people receive their just deserts?
Question:
I work for a voluntary agency, Right Track, that was on the back of my son who is actually in prison as we speak now. I gave up a well-paid job to do a voluntary job to make a difference amongst youngsters. I am working with children as young as 8 upwards and the question I have got to ask, the job I am doing I think I am making a difference, it is just that saying that basically do you honestly feel you are making a difference, because I feel as a normal person, as a father I make a difference, I question the figures you are getting as regards crime because I think it is going up, and I do cover it all over Bristol and I really do question the figures you are actually getting.
Prime Minister:
First of all, let's just say in relation to crime statistics, whether it is the British Crime Survey or recorded crime, you know it doesn't really make any difference to you frankly if you are a victim of crime, whatever the statistics are. And I think the point that was being made by Elizabeth right at the very beginning there is exactly the issue. It is not simply the serious crimes, it is the low level disorder, it is what I call disrespect being shown and people's lives being made extremely difficult as a result of it. Now what we have tried to do is to introduce the antisocial behaviour laws which give the police power to take summary action, but I do believe myself we will have to look again to see if we need to go further in that. The second thing I would say is we desperately need, and this is what we want to do in rolling out neighbourhood policing, you need a visible uniform presence on the street. And again here I think this is not just about fully warranted officers, it is also about community support officers as well.
And the point that Michael made, no I don't think the innocent are expendable, but I do think that the issue you raised for example about allowing previous convictions to be used more widely, the reason we made that change in the Criminal Justice Act was because time and again people were getting angry in court when they didn't know about previous convictions of a defendant, and then afterwards they would hear the long list of previous convictions for similar types of offences read out, and people would say well you know, and sometimes these were in situations where very nearly the person had not been convicted and I think there was a lot of concern about that, and also for the double jeopardy in the same way.
Look, the reason why I have given this lecture today is that I have come to the conclusion after the experience of government that this is an issue that it is easy to talk about on either side of the debate in a very glib way. I am actually putting the hard argument to people today and saying if you really want to deal with these issues it does mean some very, very, very difficult decisions. And that is the truth of it. Now if people don't want to take those decisions, which I understand incidentally, and that is fine, but we have got to realise what the consequences are because my point is law and order and the crime that is happening today is of a different nature from what happened 30, 40, 50 years ago, and if you don't shift the system to take account of that then we don't succeed. And incidentally none of that means that the things that Rod was talking about with young people shouldn't be happening, it should be happening.
And incidentally in relation to the voluntary work that you are doing, well look again I think that there are very deep rooted causes of this and some of the families, you know you said I think that young people, the young people who are criminals are victims as well as criminals, that is true, but you know it may be true and we should work on that, but in the meantime we can't let them run riot. So you have got to try and balance this thing out, that is why I am absolutely in favour of doing the early intervention through organisations like yours, I think they do a great job and we should do more of it, but you have still got to have a situation where if the young person doesn't take the opportunities, then even though there may be very many deep rooted reasons for that, you have got to give protection to the law abiding public and that is where the thing gets difficult.
Question:
I agree with the points made by all three speakers that the current criminal justice system is failing both the victims, the offenders and the public. But in your programme for change, Prime Minister, there was one party to the whole thing you didn't mention, the one party that benefits out of the current criminal justice system, and that is the lawyers. And I would like to know if anybody is going to be brave enough to actually challenge the whole basis of our adversarial system which has just become a game to put a lot of money into the pockets of a lot of people, and move perhaps to something like the investigative magistrate system that they have in France. That would be a real change in the legal and political culture and I wonder if anybody is brave enough to consider it.
Question:
I co-chair Avon and Somerset public protection arrangements and I am also a member of the Criminal Justice Board. My plea is for fewer targets. We have a ridiculous number of targets. I have over 40 performance indicators I have to meet, I have a whole department in my prison employed just to collect data, provide me with management information. I could be redirecting those resources, I could be actually working with offenders, I have an incredibly full prison, I have no spaces in my prison and I have lots of staff who want to be working with offenders but they are actually collecting statistics. For instance I have a target for the number of prisoners I have to put through a detox programme. We didn't meet that target because that number of prisoners didn't need detoxing, and you cannot detox prisoners who don't need detoxing. I spend a lot of time collecting that data, it is absolutely ludicrous. My plea is for fewer indicators, fewer targets and targets that make sense.
Question:
I would be surprised to hear your link with immigration and crime. I just need to separate, immigrants are victims and they usually get very exploited and we know the incidents that have happened. Is there any evidence actually that links immigrants to crimes? The other thing which you said Prime Minister which is very important, the causes of the crime, and could you relate to global terrorism, like what are the causes, why suddenly this has appeared. Is it due to our policies or the double standards we play?
Prime Minister:
Actually what I am talking about in relation to the system, the court system, does precisely involve the issue of the way lawyers behave in relation to court cases, the constant adjournments and so on, and there has been a debate that has gone on for a long time about whether we should move to a more investigative process as they have in France. You know if you talk to people in France of course they have a lot of problems that arise out of that as well. But I think whatever system you use, you see I think what you need to have, and this I think is more of a practical problem in the court system, whether you have investigating magistrates or whether you have our system, there is a need for far tougher and stricter rules in the conduct and the way that cases are managed, because if you don't have that then they are constantly played and what people find is that constant gaining goes on within the legal process. And so for example the truth is cases should not be adjourned as a result of the non-attendance of the defendant except for very, very good reasons, and if there is not a good reason for someone failing to attend court then you need to make sure those people if necessary are put in prison and await their trial in custody. Now you are going to have to get I am afraid to that stage if you want to send a strong enough signal, and you could have either an investigating magistrates system, or the one we have got, but the same problem arises if there aren't rules that are applied in a tough way so that the cases are managed quickly through the system.
I totally understand what you say about targets and I think it is a very reasonable point to make. There is a problem though, and I am not saying incidentally we shouldn't try, as we will do, to sit down as part of this change process and say well how do we get rid of some of those things that you find so irritating. But in the recent furore for example over foreign criminals, one of the problems was that we didn't have proper information, and therefore people then come to us and say well tell us what the situation is, so a certain amount of information is going to have to be kept and communicated, but I think It is a perfectly reasonable thing to say that we should try to strip down the targets considerably, and we will do that.
And finally, I am not suggesting incidentally that it is about immigration and crime linked in the way that you were suggesting, what I am saying is that all of these issues to do with the broad range of the Home Office questions, security, immigration, law and order, that all of them are the product of massive changes going on in the world and that the real problem is that the system is simply getting overrun by the scale of those challenges, which is why you need whole system reform. And the debate about the global causes of this I think would be another lecture and I think we had better leave that for another day.
Chairman:
Rod, do you have any comments you would like to make?
Rod Morgan:
The Prime Minister's speech was admirably broad ranging and philosophical and I would just like to make a couple of points in that line. Crime prevention is not a matter just for the criminal justice system and I think we focus unduly on the potency of the criminal justice system to control or prevent crime. It is important, but when it comes to young people for example, their engagement with mainstream services, particularly education, is I would argue just as important as anything that happens in response in a court if they get into trouble, that is the first point. The second point I would make to Lucy and her car, the reason why your car is less broken into is because cars are less broken into, that is a fact over the last ten years, whether that is to do with policing or better security devices on cars is a matter for debate.
However deterrence as a doctrine frankly doesn't work in most instances, except in one degree. People are deterred if they think they will be caught, getting caught is the most important thing, not what happens to you when you get caught. People calculate, if they calculate at all, and of course much offending is not calculated, it is in the wake of drink and drugs etc, but if they calculate they have to believe that they are going to be caught, that a sanction is going to apply to them etc, and usually those conditions don't apply, which is why I welcome, I have always advocated the introduction of community support officers, which the government has introduced, we need that presence on the street both to reassure people and to increase the likelihood that that sort of low level but nevertheless vitally important for quality of life incidents of which you complain are more likely to result in getting caught.
I am never going to advocate that people shouldn't have to face up to the consequences of their action, it is vital, but you don't have to criminalise young people to get them to face up to the consequences of their action and we have got to re-build some of the declining impact of community based sanctions of the sort that the Prime Minister said have gone. We have got to rebuild school discipline, we have got to rebuild the confidence of teachers, we have got to get the police involved in working with families which is why the Respect campaign is so vital. We are doing a lot of work now, the youth justice system is doing an increasing amount of work with parents who welcome voluntary assistance with methods as to how they can better control their adolescent children that they have lost all hope with, they don't know, they literally are yearning for support. And 85 per cent of the work that is now being done with parents is voluntary for parents who yearn for it. We have got to do more of that.
Michelle Bernasconi:
... the lady with the car, I think it is really common that the authorities don't take people seriously. I was interested to hear people call it low level disturbance, low level annoyance, and it has been done a number of times this morning. It is only low level when you are not living with it, when you are living with it yourself it isn't low level. A couple of quick points ... I think it is really interesting because in my view and in my community children were not the problem, they were more likely to be the victims and they are the solution, not the problem. And I don't want people to go away from this debate thinking that what I was saying was that young people are the problem in my community, they are not. And talking about who is likely to be the perpetrators, Rod mentioned about the deprived backgrounds of people who offend or behave unsociably, what I find strange is that nobody ever mentions the fact that where they offend often or where they behave unsociably is next to another family who is just as deprived and just as vulnerable and I think we need to mention that. Very, very quickly on targets, the only target that I would want to see met is that victims' views are taken into account right throughout the system and maybe that everybody should see the victim impact statement that isn't being used. And parenting orders, it says that 85 per cent of people are taking it up voluntary, but what about the 25 per cent? The legislation is there for young people that parenting orders have to be argued against in court, not for, the court has to consider the reason why not to make a parenting order than why do. So for those 25 per cent of parents that aren't coming forward I would suggest that they are the parents who most need help and I would like to see parenting orders used more with parents who are struggling with their children.
Question:
I very much welcome the comments you have made on actually reviewing the criminal system, I think it is a debate that needs to be had, as you rightly pointed out. However my question is more about process than actual content. ... yet again quite cynical about the current screaming headlines of actually catching again the public attention about certain elements of the justice system to actually reboost the government. Now what would you say to those who say that this is yet again quite late in the day of your government to actually relook again at the whole criminal system? As you said quite personally you have been a barrister, you have been in government now for 9 years, why now, why not before and what has actually triggered this change of mind? And actually are there going to be any kind of timelines, any kind of goals and targets which we can actually reflect on it in the next couple of years to actually see what is actually being done about all those proposals?
QUESTION:
I met Mr Blair in February in Downing Street. I promised to bring the ashtray back, but I didn't! Crime prevention, nobody has mentioned, or you did, you have just touched on it, lack of policing on a night time. How many pensioners, people are afraid to go out at night because of lack of policing? Now you told me, obviously you have the information, that Avon and Somerset have got 425 more police this year than they had last year. Where are they? The only time you see the police in numbers are at football matches when they are being paid for by the football clubs, at Glastonbury Festival they are being paid for, extra money again by the organisers. Where are they? What do they do during the rest of the week? My mother was mugged coming out of the bingo, she won't go to bingo any more. I had to move house, to move down to Cleveland because police took two days to come when we had problems, and this was problems with people with ASBOs, out on the street. One guy was even tagged at 3.00 in the morning. The ordinary person, if you phone for the police today you have got no chance. Police stations are closing down on an evening, what the devil are they going to do to make these Chief Constables act responsibly for the public?
Question:
My name is Mr Roberts and I have just suffered £30,000 worth of vandalism to my business... We caught the offenders and the youths, because of present legislation, were let off, despite the evidence they were only cautioned by the police. As a result I have lost income, I had to stand the clean up cost of £8,000 and my annual premium for insurance has risen by £2,000. Conversely the offenders and their parents evaded punishment and the need to pay compensation. The decision was reached by the Crown Prosecution Service. So are they to play judge and jury on a case? So is this a reason why they are called the Criminal Protection Service?
Prime Minister:
Well just on that last point, it is precisely in order to make sure that the views of victims are taken into account that we need to change the way, not just that the Crown Prosecution Service works, but also the court system as well. And I don't, if I can just go back in reverse order, we do need to get more police out on the street and community support officers along with them. And I think where neighbourhood policing has seen teams of police and community support officers, I am not saying that the situation is perfect by any means at all, but it actually has made a difference and we need to realise that the old form of community policing we need to bring back for today's world.
However I think there is a bigger issue which is raised by all three questions. It isn't of course as Michelle was saying earlier, if you take things like the antisocial behaviour legislation they have made a difference, the Criminal Justice Act has made a difference, the point is though that at each point that we have been legislating or making changes, there is this fundamental question underneath, and this is why I raised it and I come back to it again today. If we don't make the changes absolutely fundamental so that for example in the situation where you have got a victim that believes passionately that a case should be taken forward, and that if there is sufficient evidence let us say, there can be no excuse for not taking that case forward, you have got to actually have a rule that says they are entitled to have their view made and taken into account. Now that is going to require a lot of changes at every stage in the system if you are going to introduce this, and it also means that when you get to the situation of sentence you don't have the sentence passed in those circumstances until the victim has had a right to have their say. Now if we are going to make those changes they are pretty fundamental to the way that the process works.
In addition to that, as I said earlier, if you want to deal with some of these issues of antisocial behaviour in local communities, and incidentally by low level I don't mean it is not a real problem for the offender, but let's be clear, why did this antisocial behaviour legislation come about? It came about when I was visiting communities and police officers would say to me, someone commits an act of vandalism, I can take them all the way through the court process but actually the reality is at the end of that court process they will get a fine, or they might get a community sentence. And actually for the individual act that might be appropriate indeed, and therefore the police, because it would take hours of paperwork and months of time in order to get that done, they didn't do it. Now the whole purpose of the antisocial behaviour legislation was to give the police quick and summary powers, things like closing down crack houses, fixed penalty notices, and then the antisocial behaviour orders which have taken too much time but nonetheless it is a lot quicker than it used to be.
Now we need to see how we can go further in those areas, but it will mean probably a police officer in an area having power that traditionally we would have said could only be exercised by a court. Now the question is do we want to go down that path? I say in the end unless you are prepared to go down that path you will find it is very difficult to deal with that type of disorder. But there will be people who will say, with some justification, that is a complete change in the way that the criminal justice system in this country works. All I am saying, and that is the reason I wanted to come along and make this speech today, is that my experience in the 9 years is that yes the legislation we passed has made a difference actually, but if you want to make a transformational difference you are going to have to go further.
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