Crime & Justice

 

 

 

 

 

While there may be wide disagreement on the best direction for criminal justice, one thing that almost everyone agrees on is that the criminal justice system is facing some major challenges. The majority of the six manifestos acknowledge immediate and serious problems in need of attention, such as prison overcrowding, a stretched police service and delays in the courts.

 

Their approaches to solving these problems differ, but not entirely. The Conservatives root themselves firmly in a ‘Law and Order’ framework, pledging ‘safer streets and … justice for victims of crime’, an approach mirrored by Reform’s intent to ‘restore Law and Order on Britain’s streets and make sure that criminals face justice’.

 

While the Liberal Democrats and Greens put forward a range of policies focused not just on protecting victims but also focusing on a rehabilitative ‘public health’ approach to tackle underlying causes of crime, they likewise implicitly frame criminal justice policy as needing to protect communities ‘plagued’ by crime and ‘horrifically high’ violence, in the words of the Liberal Democrats.

The Conservatives, Reform and Labour all intend to create more police officers and more prison spaces, as well as pledging new laws and sentences which are likely to mean more people entering the criminal justice system. The Liberal Democrats and Green Party take a different approach, with policies on decriminalising drug offences and diverting people away from custody.

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Labour meanwhile sit in the middle, proposing to both ‘Take Back Our Streets’ and ‘put victims first’, but in the small print there are also signs of intent to challenge some of the underlying causes of offending. For example, one of Labour’s six ‘key steps for change’ is to ‘crack down on antisocial behaviour’, intending to tackle the ‘antisocial behaviour [that] blights our towns and city centres’ with new Respect Orders and banning offenders from city centres. On the other hand, they also intend to create youth community hubs and identify the children of those in prison to provide support to prevent future crime. These policies have, however, sparked intense debate, and it remains to be seen whether policies that ostensibly aim to provide support can be effective, while their main aim remains the prevention of offending rather than seeing support as worthwhile
in its own right.

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Perhaps the clearest example of the dichotomy in approaches are the pledges on regulating protest. The Conservatives reserve a significant section of their chapter on criminal justice for outlining plans to extend the powers of the police to curtail disruptive protests, including banning face coverings, climbing on war memorials and powers to prevent disorderly protests.

Reform’s draft manifesto explicitly states that they intend to ban claimed two-tier policing. In contrast, the Greens, Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru all pledge to protect the right to peaceful protest rather than to restrict it, with proposals to repeal restrictions on protests made under the previous Conservative government. This difference in attitude is also clear in how the manifestos frame these pledges: the Conservative manifesto describes protest as ‘a cover for extremist disruption and criminality’, while the pledges to protect protest are not even considered criminal justice issues in both the Green and Liberal Democrat manifestos, falling instead in chapters on democracy, equality and human rights. The difference between seeing protest as a problem to be regulated for our protection, as opposed to a fundamental opportunity for participation for all, is indicative of the wider approach of the parties to the purpose of criminal justice. Strikingly, however, Labour are the only party who make no mention of protest, except to say that they have ‘been transformed from a party of protest to one that always puts the interests of the country first’.

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As this shows, there is a sharp division between approaches from those parties offering a ‘Law and Order’ approach to criminal justice based on harsh treatment for offenders, and those attempting to look beyond current paradigms to envisage a new set of aims for a system generally agreed to be in crisis. It is only really the Green Party who set out to provide a more theoretically coherent vision of reform. Policies that show consideration of both victims and those drawn into the criminal justice system, and which derive from a clear evidence base, are more likely to have the long-term impacts of targeting underlying inequalities and building opportunities for all, compared to policies that adopt a ‘tough on crime’ stance without supporting evidence and which show little understanding of how the categories of ‘victims’ and ‘criminals’ often overlap, preferring instead to create images of good people hiding in their houses from the criminals who now rule the streets. Labour in particular use these tough policies as a way of attacking what they frame as Conservative failures; but it remains to be seen whether their more reformist policies on prevention emerge from beneath their headline policies of cracking down on crime and antisocial behaviour and ‘putting victims first’.
 

Icon credit: Cahya Kurniawan/The Noun Project