The Stand Up Tall Project: the progressive crime reduction initiative

New statistics and policy pledges

2010-04-22T10:15:00.006+01:00

British Crime Survey details released

New British Crime Survey and police-recorded figures show a 7% fall in crimes in 2009 compared to 2008, despite the recession.

The dramatic drop in overall crime was accompanied by further falls in the levels of gun and knife crime, including a 21% fall in fatal stabbings.

The latest British Crime Survey (BCS) results show a 1% rise in violent crime but Home Office statisticians say this was not statistically significant and the overall levels of violent crime remained stable.

The figures show that the risk of being a victim of crime remains historically low at 22%. The number of people who said the police were doing a good or excellent job rose from 53% to 56%.

The figures also show that the number of people who believe they are suffering from a "high level" of anti-social behaviour has fallen from 17% to 15%, the lowest figure since the measure was introduced almost a decade ago.

In effect, that meant that fewer people were complaining about abandoned cars, rowdiness or drunken behaviour in public places, drug dealing, gangs of teenagers, litter and vandalism. There was a slight rise in the number of people complaining about noisy neighbours.

All main categories of crime were down except sexual offences, which were up by 2%, according to the police figures.

The British Crime Survey found that muggings were down 21% over the year and burglary and vandalism also fell.

The numbers show that violent crime technically rose by 1%, but officials who calculate the figures say that it was not statistically significant.

The government uses two main measures of crime in England and Wales - actual offences recorded by the police and the BCS, which is a rolling survey of 45,000 people's experiences of crime, whether or not they reported the incident.

According to the BCS figures for the calendar year to the end of 2009, burglary fell 12%, vandalism 12% and vehicle-related theft 11%.

Recorded crime by the police shows recorded violence fell by 3% and drugs offences were down 4%.

Police forces also recorded an 11% drop in criminal damage and a 5% fall in muggings and robberies.

Domestic burglary went down 3% and there was a 16% drop in offences against vehicles, which includes attempting to break into a car.

Provisional figures included in the report show a 3% fall in gun-related crime recorded by the police in the year to December 2009. Firearms offences accounted for less than 1% of all crime.

Overall, police recorded 4.4 million crimes, down from almost 4.8m a year before.

Violent crime falling says new study

Further new figures released have thrown an incendiary into the election debate on violent crime.

Analysis of hospital data for England and Wales, by academics at Cardiff University, shows there were 64,000 fewer violence-related attendances in emergency departments last year than in 2001 - a fall of just over 15%.

This contrasts with Conservative claims that violent crime has increased by 44% since 2002. It also appears to contradict Liberal Democrat analysis that hospital admissions for assault are rising.

The figures from the Cardiff study neatly track the downward trend in violence identified by the British Crime Survey (BCS), adding new weight to the argument that, for most people, England and Wales are less violent places than they were a decade ago.

Mark Easton has more here.

Election Pledges:

Labour:

Protect "frontline" police from budget cuts in 2011-2013; ensure that if a police forces fails consistently, either its chief constable will be replaced or it will be taken over by a neighbouring force; oppose elected police authorities or commissioners; "no-nonsense" one-to-one support for the 50,000 most "dysfunctional" families; automatic parenting orders on those whose teenage children breach an Asbo; guarantee an initial response to any complaint about anti-social behaviour within 24 hours and give complainers a named case worker who will report back on progress; make restorative justice available wherever victims approve it, bringing home to criminals the consequences of their crimes; add 15,000 prison places by 2014; give local people a vote on what community service offenders should do; ensure that serious offenders are added to the DNA database "no matter where or when they were convicted"; retain for six years the DNA profiles of those arrested but not convicted.

Liberal Democrats:

Increase police numbers by 3,000 over five years; scrap identity card scheme; make police authorities directly elected, with powers to sack and appoint the Chief Constable, set local policing priorities, and set budgets; annual fitness tests for police officers; replace form-filling with new technology; create a National Crime Reduction Agency to spread best practice through the force; review police officers terms and conditions; seek advice from Law Commission and Plain English Campaign to make paperwork more simple; reduce the use of short sentences and encourage use of community sentencing to reduce prison overcrowding; increase use of "restorative justice", forcing criminals to confront their behaviour.

Conservatives:

Replace police authorities with directly-elected police commissioners, with responsibility for strategy and budgets; strengthen stop and search powers to tackle knife crime; give police the power to publicly identify offenders; change the law so that anyone acting "reasonably" to stop a crime or apprehend a criminal is not arrested or prosecuted; increase police and local authorities’ powers to remove licences from, or refuse to grant licences to problem bars; allow the police to use "instant sanctions" to deal with anti-social behaviour, without criminalising young people unnecessarily; reduce paperwork needed for stop and search procedures; increase prison capacity above Labour’s plans, in order to scrap the early release scheme; use private and voluntary sector groups to improve the rehabilitation of offenders, and pay providers by results; allow courts to specify minimum and maximum sentences for certain offenders; scrap ID cards and identity database.

News updates

2010-03-29T17:10:00.004+01:00

New figures indicate falls in reoffending rate among young people

The percentage of offences committed by young people with previous convictions has fallen by nearly nine per cent between 2005 and 2008, government figures reveal.

The rate of offences committed by "juvenile reoffences" fell from 125 per 100 offenders in 2005 to 113.9 in 2008. Overall, figures show that between 2000 and 2008, the frequency of juvenile reoffending fell 24.8 per cent.

Frances Done, chair of the Youth Justice Board, said: "Year on year, the reoffending figures continue to fall.

"This is a tribute to the dedicated work undertaken by staff working in youth offending teams, custodial centres and all youth justice partners."

She said work to reach the government target of seeing a 10 per cent reduction in reoffending by young people from 2005 to 2011, is on track.

Schools minister Vernon Coaker said: "We know that the vast majority of young people are law abiding citizens. But those that do commit a crime must face the consequences.
"We now need to build on this success and to continue our efforts to intervene early and tackle the root causes of youth crime."

BBC launch Jail Tales

Ashley Walters, a contributor to the Stand Up Tall Project, is launching Jail Tales with the BBC. The Jail Tales project is an ambitious mix of multiplatform content, and consists of a series of viral You Tube videos, short films, animated shorts, exclusive music performances and a gritty photo gallery on Facebook. More information can be found at the BBC wesbite here.

Police told to take serious ASBO action

Gordon Brown election pledge

In an attempt to empower victims of antisocial behaviour, the prime minister says they will be entitled to take out civil injunctions, funded by the local public authority, if the police are not taking action within a set time.

"People have got to know if they have a real complaint they will get a fast response, and ultimately if they feel they have not been given satisfaction, they will be able to take a civil injunction themselves and that will be paid for by the authority." Labour is also planning to install champions for victims of antisocial behaviour in every local authority.

News updates: A focus on the fear

2010-03-07T20:53:00.007Z

PM attacks the politics of fear and announces crime measures

Gordon Brown has set out new measures to tackle anti-social behaviour, as he put the fight against the fear of crime and yobbery at the heart of the general election battle.

The Prime Minister accused the Conservatives of ramping up the fear of crime by "abusing" statistics and spreading the "fiction" that Britain is a broken society.

And he warned that David Cameron's party would "politicise" the police by introducing elections for top officers.

Mr Brown repeated pledges that Labour will protect frontline policing against cuts as the Government seeks to halve the state deficit in four years. He also said he wanted policing to be more "visible", with neighbourhood officers spending 80% of their time on the beat and patrolling singly rather than in pairs.

Speaking to an audience of police officers in Reading, Mr Brown said that he would legislate in the next session if Labour is re-elected to give victims of serious anti-social behaviour a "guarantee of protection".

Citing the case of Fiona Pilkington, who killed herself and her disabled daughter after failing to receive protection against bullies, Mr Brown said that victims should be supported in getting legal injunctions, with the costs paid by the agencies who had let them down.

He confirmed plans for a new non-emergency number to inform police about anti-social behaviour and said that from now there would be an expectation that anyone breaching an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo) will be prosecuted, and that the parents of those under 16 would also face action.

New Film: The Fear Factory

A new film has been launched, which looks at the problems surrounding the fear of crime and criticises the so-called "arms race" on law and order issues between political parties. Watch the trailer here.

New Economics Foundation: Young criminals 'cost £140,000'

Jailing one young criminal costs the taxpayer as much as £140,000 a year, a report has said.

Locking up young offenders also makes them more likely to commit further crimes and be unemployed later in life, the New Economics Foundation said.

The think-tank called for drastic cuts in the use of youth custody.

Budgets for youth custody should be given to councils and the money reinvested in rehabilitation programmes, the report said.

Last month there were 2,195 children aged 10 to 17-year-olds imprisoned in England and Wales.
Each place costs £100,000 a year and an extra £40,000 in indirect costs to society once the inmate is released.

A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said: "Latest figures show there are 20% fewer first time young offenders under 18 years of age than a year ago and the frequency of youth re-offending has fallen by nearly a quarter since 2000."

Chris Huhne: Tough on Crime? Jail is not the answer

Chris Huhne, a contributor to the Stand Up Tall Project, writes that locking up more people is a populist ploy that doesn't cut crime, and that we should focus on rigorous community sentences instead. Read the full article here.

Chris Grayling and David Cameron can't go on like this

2010-02-07T22:11:00.006Z

The more you really think about what Chris Grayling is trying to achieve by deliberately deceiving the British public about the reality of crime rates in Britain, the worse it gets. Exposed by the BBC, rebuked by the Chairman of the independent UK Statistics Authority for ‘damaging public trust’, debunked by this week’s Economist in a front page special feature, condemned by local police commanders, and denounced by Conservative colleagues, Chris Grayling has vowed to maintain his crumbling stance on this issue until the general election. Last Friday, it was left to the Director of Reform, the right-wing think tank, to set the record straight at ConservativeHome with a decent intervention, after Tory activists and bloggers had wearily attempted to defend the indefensible on the site, earlier on in the day.

The truth is that this problem is not isolated to crime figures. For example, today only half as many girls between 15 and 19 years old bear a child in their teens than when their grandmothers were that age. Smoking is falling among adults and children and is now one of the rich world’s lowest rates. And it has just been revealed that the number of divorces in England and Wales has fallen for a fifth successive year to the lowest rate for 29 years. None of this matches up to the 'Broken Britain' narrative.

There are urgent questions that need to be asked, particularly in light of defamatory press releases, which have been sent out under the radar to every constituency in England and Wales, purporting to show that violent crime had risen sharply; these press releases have the simple aim of terrifying decent British people into voting Conservative.

Firstly, why exactly do senior Tories find it so difficult to accept that violent crime has fallen? The issue is that when your reality is constructed around long-term hysteria, prejudice and episodes of The Wire, having to honourably front up to the fact that crime has fallen 41% since 1997 becomes difficult. Everything you thought you knew about the world, and how it works, is shaken up by it. Violent crime is now almost half of what it was in 1995, and is no higher than in 1981, for example. Police figures indicate a 10-year low for murder rates, and the number of people worried about antisocial behaviour has fallen to 15% — the lowest on record.

Secondly, what are the potential dangers of an ongoing campaign run by Chris Grayling based on suggesting violent crime has shot up? Well, a negative and imbalanced portrayal of disadvantaged British communities and youngsters does nothing but whip up insecurity, resentment and division around individual acts of crime, when they do happen. The result is a culture of fear and alienation, which trickles down to vulnerable youngsters, who seek status and protection through arming themselves. All knife-related violence has just fallen by 12% in the latest figures - however the 85% of that small minority of 10-19 year olds who previously reported carrying a knife cited the need for protection as their reason for carrying a knife. The damage done to real British youngsters and real British communities by Grayling’s campaign could be potentially devastating.

Finally, what can Westminster and the media do in response to all of this? For a start, Grayling and Cameron could front up to the truth, stop pushing these fiddled statistics and apologise to the British public, as well as the hardworking British police forces, who more often than not doing a great job. In the longer-term, Cameron has to shift the focus onto policies, if he sees issues he wants to address.

For the first time in a long time, the British media are beginning to wake up to the issues around the gaps in perception and actual crime figures. We need to keep on getting the message out, nationally and locally, because people are really listening to us about this. And in the end, there is nothing more powerful than the truth.

By Gabe Trodd

January updates

2010-01-27T16:46:00.008Z

Minister proposes tougher sentences for knife crimes

The attorney general has proposed "a new adult starting point of 25 years for murder where an offender aged 18 or over takes a knife or other weapon to the scene of the crime with the intention of using it to commit any offence, or to use it as a weapon, and uses it in committing the murder".

Baroness Scotland of Asthal told the Lords that the proposals "are intended to provide for more transparency and a greater degree of consistency in sentencing".

"There will be no initial cost and the provision will have no cost for 15 years from the point of implementation, but will increase each subsequent year over a period of about 45 years, which is when the provision will have reached its maximum impact," she said.

Agency for crime victims launched

Families of murder victims will be the first to benefit from a new Government body for victims of crime.

In a major speech, Justice Secretary Jack Straw announced the launch date of the National Victims Agency, which will begin work in March.

Services will be extended to victims of other crimes, including anti-social behaviour, from April.

Victims will be offered a "health check" to determine what they need. The most vulnerable will be eligible for intensive support from counsellors and practical help to rebuild their lives.

Sara Payne, mother of murdered schoolgirl Sarah Payne and the Government's "Victims' Champion", recommended the creation of the £8 million agency in a report last year.

Addressing the Royal Society for the Arts, Mr Straw said the agency is part of major reforms to the justice system.

"The aim is that for the first time, victims will be given support from the moment they report a crime or anti-social behaviour until the moment they say they no longer need help," he said.

"This is a defining moment. The National Victims Service will provide for anyone who has been a victim of crime and who wants assistance.

"If victims need help, we will be there for them. And, fundamentally, it will ensure that supporting victims is firmly embedded in the culture of the justice service, as a core function of the service, not an optional add-on."

MPs say £4.2bn plan to boost jail places is costly mistake

The £4.24bn bill for the government's prison building programme is unsustainable and the cash would be better spent on rehabilitation and prevention so as to cut crime, says a Commons select committee report on justice published tomorrow.

The MPs say the prison building scheme is at present a "costly mistake" that will take jail capacity in England and Wales to 96,000 by 2014, making it the prison capital of western Europe.

The report, Cutting Crime: the Case for Justice Reinvestment, is based on a two-year inquiry by a cross-party group of MPs. It discloses that the £4.24bn cost of creating 10,000 extra prisoner places by 2014, from 86,000, has "more or less been guaranteed by the Treasury" regardless of the coming squeeze on public spending.

The MPs claim the government "is wedded to a prison-building agenda" despite overwhelming evidence showing jail is not the most effective way of reducing reoffending for many people. At the same time the justice ministry is being asked to make £1.3bn of cost savings.

Police stop and search 'not cutting knife crime', new figures suggest

There is little connection between the use of stop and search powers by the Metropolitan police and reductions in knife crime, according to new figures analysed by a leading criminologist.

Professor Marian Fitzgerald says that in the case of one London borough – Southwark – a huge expansion in the use of "section 60" stop and search powers has actually been accompanied by an increase in knife crime. The section 60 powers under the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act allow the police to search anyone without needing to have grounds for suspicion in a designated area at a specific time where they believe there is threat of serious violence.

Fitzgerald also says the recent European court of human rights ruling that section 44 counterterrorist stop and search powers are unlawful because they are too widely drawn and lack adequate safeguards should also apply to section 60 searches.

This exceptional power was introduced to deal with football hooligans and gang fights and has been rarely used over the past 15 years. But a decision by the Met to use section 60 searches as part of their drive against knife crime means that since May 2008 there has been a huge expansion and they have become routine in many London boroughs. The latest figures show the number of section 60 searches has rocketed from 4,400 in 2003-04 to more than 80,000 in 2008-09.

Boris Johnson stands down from Met Police role as deputy steps up

Boris Johnson has stepped down as chair of Met Police Authority - the organisation that runs the Met.

His deputy, Kit Malthouse, will now take on responsibility for the country's largest police force.

When he was elected, Mr Johnson said he would personally take charge of the police to tackle crime in the capital. But sources said Mr Johnson made the decision because he was finding it difficult to devote enough time to the post.

The British Crime Survey: Crime rate falls by 8% in England and Wales

2010-01-21T11:47:00.003Z

Crime in England and Wales fell 8% in the third quarter of 2009 compared with the year before, the Home Office says.

The latest figures on recorded offences show there was an 8% drop in burglaries.

Car crime fell by a fifth and the number of robberies showed a reduction of 9%.

Ministers say the British Crime Survey's separate study reveals that the risk of being a victim of crime has reached its lowest recorded level.

According to the quarterly crime figures covering July to September 2009, there were falls in all categories of recorded crime over the period, with the exception of sexual offences which rose 5%.

The figures also show a drop in the number of robberies involving knives or blades - down 16% on the same period in 2008. All knife-related violence fell by 12%.

Within violent crime, police recorded a 3% increase in firearms-related crimes - 70 offences in total across England and Wales. All other categories of violent crime fell.

Within theft, there was a 7% rise in recorded incidents of pick-pocketing and the theft of bicycles.

While police reported a significant drop in recorded crime, the British Crime Survey says that overall levels of crime remained stable.

Other BCS figures showed a fall in the number of people who believed anti-social behaviour was a problem in their neighbourhood - down from 17% to 15%.

The figures on burglary and anti-social behaviour were welcomed by ministers amid concerns earlier in the recession that householders could suffer as unemployment rose.

Binge-drinking: it's time for long-term solutions

2010-01-20T19:29:00.010Z

So, the vision was quite a nice one, I guess: an accessible, continental café bar culture with a British twist. Since 1997, Britain has definitely come on a long way in some areas. We have great food, cool fashion, free admission to national museums and galleries to see world-renowned art, and Labour’s smoking ban has been a success. But there’s no doubt about it, binge-drinking and alcohol-related crime is an issue.

This week, the debate has gone like this. Alan Johnson announced a crackdown on irresponsible retailers. From April, pubs, clubs and bars will be barred from offering "all you can drink for 10 pounds"-style promotions, as well as events like speed drinking competitions, and the measures will also include forcing pub landlords to ask for identification proving that drinkers are over 18. While the Conservatives are proposing to raise taxes on super-strength beer and cider.

Most British people understand only too well that people who become drunk are much more likely to be involved in an accident or assault, be charged with a criminal offence and contract a sexually transmitted disease. Significantly, the annual UK bill for alcohol-related crime is far too high.

The saddest, and often unspoken, problem with Britain’s complicated relationship with alcohol is the divisions that come about between younger and older people, and the creation of "no-go areas" in the UK. Indeed, one in every four people say they avoid parts of their local area because of alcohol related crime.

Too often the Westminster response has been lists of quick fixes - mandatory codes, booze asbos, Alcohol Disorder Zones etc. Now, minimum pricing policies are being called for, which although might be effective, could penalise those on low incomes.

There are three responses to UK binge-drinking, which can be explored:

Firstly, it’s time to firm define the market for the better, starting with advertising. Drinks companies spend no less than £800 million a year on advertising. Sponsorship of sports and the arts by alcohol firms can be particularly troubling.

Secondly, Britain can empower British kids with the self-esteem and education that’s necessary to stay out of trouble. Demos, for example, has previously flagged up programmes such as Life Skills Training, launched in the US, which aims to reduce alcohol and substance abuse through classroom-based education. Targeted at teenagers and cheap to deliver, the programmes have helped to reduce alcohol and substance abuse by 50-75%. Every dollar spent on the programme saves the state and society $25 in the long run through reductions in crime.

Thirdly, taking alcohol out of the equation requires it to be replaced by alternative things to do – more youth services and activities produced in consultation with young people are needed now more than ever.

In the face of hysterical and sensationalist reporting by the media, and constant scare-mongering from politicians, young people need encouragement and empowerment. The truth is that a high percentage of children and young people lead largely positive lifestyles and work to achieve many beneficial outcomes for themselves and their wider communities. Much of this work, done tirelessly and selflessly for others, goes unnoticed, unrecognised and unrewarded.

By Gabe Trodd

The Truth About Prison by Ben Gunn

2009-11-10T23:46:00.005Z

Reconcile the following statements: "Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse"; and "Prison works!” These declarations are from two Home Secretaries, from the same party, within a couple of years of each other. Such is the depth of the conflict that surrounds the purpose of imprisonment that even those who share common ground on the nature of the individual and the broad causes of crime are unable to agree on the purpose of the response.

What is required is an effort to lift imprisonment above the daily scrummage of politics, to create and elevate a broad consensus as to its purpose. For decades society has paid the price - financial and social - of a response to crime whose very purpose is subject to the vagaries of electoral advantage. At best this has been inept short-termism and at worst shockingly dishonest.

Fundamentally, it seems that imprisonment is hoped to fulfil two broad goals - punishment and rehabilitation. In practice, these functions undermine each other during the course of daily life on the landings with the result of high rates of recidivism and billions of pounds wasted. Absurdities abound because of these competing forces. For instance, digital TV is inescapable but lest prisoners get too comfortable we are restricted to 9 channels. Not 30, not 5, but 9. By what calculation is one number endowed with the precise measure of both punishment and rehabilitation?

We are forced to work, partly on the basis of inculcating a 'work ethic'. And yet the work is menial and we are paid pocket money. We are forced to attain basic literacy and numeracy, increasing our employment prospects. And yet as soon as we can read and write, funding for further education is denied. We are allowed access to payphones, but then charged 7 times the rate of phones outside. These illustrate the practical outcomes of the fracture created by the punishment-rehabilitation dichotomy.

This also renders policy makers perpetually vulnerable to claims of being overly-soft and overly-punitive. This fosters a mindset of reaction to political pressures, of being buffeted by the latest media campaign. It also encourages short-termism, to the detriment of prisoners and society.

Honest debate, away from the temptations of electoral calculation, is imperative. As a society we need to ask two questions. Firstly, what is the intended outcome of imprisonment? And secondly, which process is most likely to achieve that outcome - punishment, or rehabilitation?
Muddling along from day to day is leading to disaster. It cannot be socially beneficial to throw ever-increasing numbers of citizens behind bars, and to do so whilst demanding budget cuts only degrades prison regimes further.

The sad reality is that there seems to be little appetite for a debate, let alone any efforts to create a penological consensus.

It is far more likely that we will drift onwards, weaving the same inconsistent course between helping and crippling prisoners and the wasted lives and taxes will continue to mount up. Unless, of course, prisoners themselves begin to assert their power. Perhaps we are the last and only hope for change?

John "Ben" Gunn's blog is the only blog written by a serving UK prisoner. Ben has served 30 years of a life sentence, and is currently in HM Prison Shepton Mallet. He is the general secretary of the Association of Prisoners. At present he is doing research towards a PhD, focused upon the role of Human Needs Theory in prison conflicts.

Alcohol and crime: the problems with Booze Asbos by Jon Collins

2009-11-02T22:23:00.007Z

When appointed Home Secretary earlier this year, Alan Johnson claimed that the Government had been ‘coasting’ on antisocial behaviour and promised ‘a new drive’ to tackle the issue.

This new drive included the introduction of Drinking Banning Orders, or ‘Booze-Asbos’, which were launched over the summer with the aim, Johnson said, of giving the courts ‘powers to take action against people whose problem drunken behaviour makes other people’s lives a misery’. The Home Office suggested that the orders could be used to ban individuals from drinking in public places and restrict them from entering certain areas. However, the legislation itself is far more wide-ranging. It states that the orders give magistrates the power to ‘impose any prohibition on the subject which is necessary for the purpose of protecting other persons from criminal or disorderly conduct by the subject while he is under the influence of alcohol’. A list of restrictions follows, but they only preclude the order from banning an individual from their home, job, educational establishment or anywhere that they are required to attend by the court.

‘Any prohibition’ certainly gives magistrates a huge amount of scope. They could ban an individual, for example, from an entire country or from seeing their partner. It is not clear if this is what was intended or whether this is yet another example of poorly-drafted legislation which fails to specify closely enough what it intends to achieve. The Home Office guidance is similarly confused. It states that ‘prohibitions should be proportionate’, but then goes on to suggest that an order could include exclusion from all licensed premises in England and Wales, despite recognising on the same page that this would prevent the individual from entering most supermarkets and food shops. In practical terms this is a draconian punishment and might well not stand up to a legal challenge.

Drinking Banning Orders are the most recent in a long list of Government initiatives intended to tackle alcohol-related crime, many of which have had questionable success. For example, Alcohol Disorder Zones were introduced with the intention of compelling pubs and clubs to make a financial contribution towards tackling alcohol related disorder in a particular area. However, it has subsequently emerged that no Alcohol Disorder Zones have been created, with suggestions that they would have been unworkable in practice. Antisocial behaviour orders, with their well-publicised limitations, were also intended in part to address drunken disorder.

New measures also continue to be introduced. The latest to roll off the Home Office conveyor belt is contained in the current Policing and Crime Bill, which, if passed, will create the offence of ‘persistently possessing alcohol in a public place’. Under this proposal, any person under the age of 18 would be guilty of an offence if they are in possession of alcohol in a public place on three or more occasions within a year. Whatever the merits of this measure, it is impossible to see how the police will administer it in practice. Will a list be kept of young people who have been caught once or twice, and then every time a young person is seen drinking in a public place the police will have to take their name and then compare it the existing list to see if this puts them over the 3-strikes limit? How would such a list be managed? Would it be on a national scale, as no specific area is defined? If so, how would police forces liaise? The practical implications are unworkable.

Clearly, drinking is often related to disorderly and antisocial behaviour and this issue should not be ignored. However, these ill thought-out and gimmicky measures will do little to solve the problem, while the Conservatives’ plan to increase the cost of alcopops and super-strength lagers is also likely to have little impact. With crime and antisocial behaviour likely to be prominent on the political agenda in the run-up to the forthcoming general election, an approach that tackles the underlying culture that promotes binge-drinking, rather than slapping a band-aid on the symptoms, is long overdue.

Jon Collins is the Campaign Director of the Criminal Justice Alliance.

Pandering to the tabloids is not the answer, by Paula Lavis & Lucie Russell of YoungMinds

2009-10-21T16:26:00.008+01:00

The young lad in the NSPCC poster who is being beaten and sexually abused brings us close to tears, and we all identify with him and want the state to intervene. But this lad and thousands like him will probably end up in a young offenders institution. Somewhere along the way society has turned its empathy into anger and hatred. Fuelled by the tabloids, anything that might actually start to turn young offender’s lives around is seen as being ‘nice’ to offenders.

Many young people who are at risk of offending can be identified at an early stage (Bowen, et al., 2008). Therefore vulnerable children and their families should be given help and support to minimize these risks. We have to intervene early, and if we do we will save millions in costs to the criminal justice system and other social care costs as well as creating safer societies in the future (Audit Commission, 2004). Its common sense, and yet there are still thousands of young people falling through the net. There are only about 60, 000 children and young people in care (Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2008), but nearly half will end up in the prison system (Youth Justice Board (2007). Why can’t we get it right?

Many children and young people who end up in prison are not having their needs met. Young offenders are included within Standard 9 of the National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services (Department of Health, 2004). So they should have access to the same range of services as outlined in the Comprehensive Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) (Department of Health, 2004) (Department of Health, 2007), but this is not always the case.

We know from our consultancy and training work that not all staff in the juvenile prison estate received training in children and young people’s mental health. YoungMinds’ believes that all staff working with children and young people should receive training in children and young people’s development, and mental health. How people behave is very much connected to how they think and feel; it is also connected to brain development; and their past experiences e.g. problems forming relationships, childhood abuse and neglectful childhoods. So there is a need to look beyond the behavior and understand what is happening in the young person’s life. In line with the Children’s Workforce Strategy (Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2008), and the CAMHS Review (Children and Young People in Mind, 2008), we would like to see all staff working with children and young people to have training in children’s mental health, and children and young people’s development.

Young people with mental health problems should be diverted out of the youth justice system at an early stage and treated in the community, any vulnerable young person who has to be in the youth justice system should be placed in an environment suitable to their needs. There should be continuity of care after young people with mental health problems leave the prison. YoungMinds’ would like to see a care pathway that includes the full range of mental health services, with transitional arrangements for young people leaving prison, and needing help to access services in the community.

Its about time policy makers stopped pandering to the tabloids and invested in comprehensive services for young offenders, starting from early childhood, diversion out of the youth justice system, support for young offenders who have to go to prison and a robust resettlement strategy when they leave, as well as for those who are being supervised in the community.

After all the solutions are not about ‘tough’ and ‘soft’ approaches but about effective interventions that work.

YoungMinds is the UK’s leading charity committed to improving the emotional well being and mental health of children and young people and empowering their parents and carers. Driven by their experiences we campaign, research and influence policy and practice. We also provide expert knowledge to professionals, parents and young people through our parents helpline, online resources, training and development, outreach work and publications.

References:
Audit Commission (2004) Youth Justice 2004. London: Audit Commission. http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk/nationalstudies/communitysafety/Pages/youthjustice2004.aspx

Bowen, E. et al. (2008). Characteristics associated with resilience in children at high risk of involvement in anti-social and other problem behaviour. London: Home Office.http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs08/r282.pdf

Children and young people in mind: the final report of the National CAMHS Review (2008). http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/CAMHSreview/downloads/CAMHSReview-Bookmark.pdf.

Department of Health (2004). National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services: Standard 9. London: Department of Health. http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/Browsable/DH_4094607?IdcService=GET_FILE&dID=22614&Rendition=Web

Department of Health (2007). Promoting mental health for children held in secure settings. London: Department of Health. http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_073414

Department for Children, Schools and Families (2008). 2010 Children and young people’s workforce strategy. London: Department for Children, Schools and Families. http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/strategy/childrenandyoungpeoplesworkforce/workforcestrategy/

Department for Children, Schools and Families (2008). Children looked after in England (including adoption and care leavers) year ending 31 March 2008. London: Department for Children, Schools and Families. http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000810/index.shtml

Lader, D. et al. (2000). Psychiatric morbidity among young offenders in England and Wales. London: Office for National Statistics. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_health/PyscMorbYoungOffenders97.pdf

Paton, J. et al. (2009). Young offenders’ of experiences of traumatic life events. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, V. 14 (1), pp. 43-62. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_health/PyscMorbYoungOffenders97.pdf

Youth Justice Board (2007). Accommodation, needs and experiences. London: Youth Justice Board. http://www.yjb.gov.uk/Publications/Scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=329&eP=

Welcome back...

2009-10-15T14:30:00.013+01:00

A series of events over the summer has firmly placed a dazzling spotlight on UK crime, its causes and its coverage. Indeed, against the backdrop of a number of all too familiar tragic events, the summer of 2009 saw developments and talking points that included: policy on crime become a high profile focal point at party conferences; the introduction of Violent Offender Orders, where offenders can be banned from places, events, and from contacting particular people; the dramatic return of ASBOs to the forefront of British politics; proposals from the Conservatives to confiscate mobile phones from youth offenders, and inflammatory comparisons between modern British communities with the hit television show, the Wire...

But the most significant question that has been thrown up by the summer of 2009, the party conference season and the summer's media coverage is this: is there now, at long last, space for a new school of thought - a new attitude and approach - to crime in the UK, its causes and its coverage?

Summer Recess

2009-08-05T11:02:00.017+01:00

The Stand Up Tall Project will be returning shortly after the summer break. Please stay tuned.

Further crime statistic controversy

2009-07-22T12:24:00.002+01:00

We must work relentlessly, with inclusivity and positivity, to reduce fear, address the root causes of crime and make public and social space safer and positive for teenage boys in the inner cities. But a further batch of crime statistics and the subsequent media coverage today highlights the extent to which knife crime statistics are a complicated and delicate issue; the number of stabbings are down, but the number of deaths are up.

A multimillion-pound scheme to tackle knife violence among young people has reduced hospital admissions and offences, it has been revealed. There has been a 32% reduction in NHS hospital admissions for knife crime victims in the 10 target areas. However, the programme has failed to bring down the number of what the Home Office call “sharp-instrument homicides” among the original target group of 19 and younger. The number of teenage homicide victims of knife crime remained unchanged at 23, while the number of adults over the age of 20 killed actually went up during the campaign by seven to 103, results of the official monitoring programme show. Overall knife-related violence fell by 10%, but the number of deaths among teenagers remains unchanged.

Despite the controversy and difficulties around the coverage of last week’s Annual Crime Survey Statistics, the Guardian ran with the front page headline: ‘Deaths on rise as government anti-knife crime strategy fails’. The BBC’s coverage, so far, is along the same lines. While, of course, it is deeply troubling that so many are still dying, it is to be welcomed that knife crime as a whole is down.

The problems of perception by Gabe Trodd

2009-07-21T18:49:00.007+01:00

It's positive that inequalities in wealth, education and employment are well documented with much literature, thought and resource. However, it seems that many people are still coming to terms with more abstract, less accessible and less well documented inequalities; the last fortnight of media coverage suggests many people accept ‘crime’ not only as a byword for 'poverty', but for life, in general, in urban British communities. The truth is that crime is falling, and exists across all strata of society.

The Centre for Social Justice say that 85 per cent of 10-19 year olds who report carrying a knife cite the need for protection as their reason for carrying a knife, but I suspect a lot of this fear is trapped within a vicious circle, stemming from the upper echelons of British society. Generally speaking, it’s still largely seen as acceptable to abandon this whole area, comprised of many vulnerable, constrained, fearful people, to the inevitable blanket cynicism of hyperbolic media coverage and political positioning, which often has a hugely damaging effect.

The messages that can be taken from last week’s British Crime Survey (BCS), an annual analysis of crime figures for England and Wales, are both startling and positive. Positive because crime is going down; startling because the findings are at odds with public perceptions and much of the media coverage the figures received. The number of murders, manslaughters, and child killings has dropped by 17 per cent to a 20-year low. Thefts and domestic burglaries are up at a lower than expected rate, but overall crime is down by 5 per cent, with violent crime and gun crime down by six and 17 per cent respectively. And yet, as surveys consistently show, the prevailing view steadfastly holds that crime is rising and out of control.

The proportion of people who perceive an increase in crime nationally (75 per cent) is far higher than that which perceives an increase in crime locally (36 per cent). The difference is great for knife crime (93 per cent of people think there has been an increase nationally, compared with 29 per cent locally) and gun crime (86 per cent and 16 per cent, respectively), despite actual reductions in both these offences. Clearly, this is indicative of a generalised anxiety about crime in Britain, rather than perceptions based on personal experiences.

Earlier this week, Chris Grayling’s proposals for those involved in anti-social behaviour to have their mobile phones confiscated, aimed at helping "disrupt" gang activity and making a point to troublemakers, were widely met with a lukewarm response – the proposals were dismissed as gimmicky, superficial and liable to increase crime. Subsequently, the Shadow Home Secretary casually began an article entitled ‘We Need Fresh Ideas on Knife Crime’, at Comment is Free, with the following paragraph:"I was told the story by an officer in one of our young offender institutions. It was, apparently, the latest initiation ritual in one of the gangs. Take your knife, go out and find an innocent passer by, and mutilate them with that knife. Then you can join the gang."

There has been 5% rise in fraud offences, including credit card and online fraud, and a 10% increase in shoplifting recorded by the police – although these aren’t the type of offences that grab headlines or concern the electorate the most. So, the Shadow Home Secretary recognised a 17% fall in gun crime was not matched by similar progress on knife crime where, despite a high-profile government campaign, the number of robberies involving knives fell only 2% to 16,702 cases. This kind of strategic positioning, married with very vivid and emotive imagery, can surely be hugely destructive.

Indeed, headlines in the Telegraph, "One in Four adults is a crime victim", let alone the Sun, "Crime crunch UK" were very much along the same lines. The Financial Times news pages ignored the murder figure altogether, their headline reading: "Surge in shoplifting and fraud reveals effects of recession on crime."

Ipsos Mori, monitoring long-term public attitudes, notes: "Media portrayals of crime and justice do seem particularly perverse." Indeed, David Cameron's "Broken Britain" narrative never refers to the fact that the risk of being a victim of any kind of crime was 40% in 1995 and is now 23%.

News Snippets

2009-07-16T17:49:00.009+01:00

Thursday 16th July
British Crime Survey published
The murder rate in England and Wales has fallen to its lowest in 20 years, with 648 homicides recorded in 2008/09 – 136 fewer than the year before.

There were some signs of "underlying upward pressure" on the crime rate, with a 5% rise in fraud offences, including credit card and online fraud, and a 10% increase in shoplifting recorded by the police.
But the annual crime figures published appear to show that the economic recession has had a limited impact, with a lower than expected 1% increase in domestic burglary.
According to the British Crime Survey, the risk of being a victim of crime rose for the first time for several years from 22% to 23% but remained substantially down on the 40% recorded when crime peaked in 1995.
The Home Office said the long-term trend in England and Wales according to the BCS showed crime rising steadily from 1981 through to the early 1990s before peaking in 1995. Since then crime had fallen by 36%.
Despite the figures, 75% of the public believe crime is rising nationally. Fewer though, 36%, say it is increasing in their own neighbourhood.
Public confidence in the ability of the police and local councils to deal with antisocial behaviour has risen from 45% to 49% in the past year.

Green paper due on early intervention
The Department for Children, Schools and Families is planning a green paper on early intervention and prevention, Children and Young People Now have revealed.
It is due to be published after the party conference season in October or November and will complement the families green paper due to be published at the same time.

Misbehaving young Londoners to earn back free travel
Young Londoners who have their free travel cards taken away for bad behaviour will be able to get them back by doing environmental conservation work. The Earn Your Travel Back scheme will exclude young people who have committed a crime, according to London Mayor Boris Johnson, who committed to setting up such a scheme in his manifesto.

The scheme, which launches in September, will be run by youth volunteering charity V. The London Wildlife Trust and BTCV (formerly the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers) will provide the conservation work.

Shoplifting fines tightened
On-the-spot fines for shoplifting will now be limited to first-time offenders who are not drug users, Justice Secretary Jack Straw has said.
Mr Straw said he had issued "strengthened revised guidance" to the courts on retail theft.
The changes will apply to shoplifters who have less than £100 in goods or caused less than £300 damages and are not drug users

Wednesday 15th July

Police terror searches suspended
Terrorism stop-and-searches have been suspended in Hampshire after police used the powers almost 3,500 times but made no terror-related arrests.
Hampshire Constabulary used section 44 of the Terrorism Act to stop people 3,481 times in 2007/2008 and held 36 suspects for non-terrorist activities.
It said it wanted "to be more in line with other forces".

Monday 13th July

New report launched by campaign group, Transition to Adulthood Alliance
Young adults leaving custody should get similar support and supervision to care leavers including a social worker and personal adviser, campaigners have urged.
The Transition to Adulthood Alliance, made up of eleven criminal justice organisations and charities, called for the measure as part of a package of recommendations to boost support for offenders aged 18-24.
The coalition's report, A New Start, highlighted that young adults committed a third of all crimes, costing the taxpayer between £16-20bn a year. The group’s recommendations can be read here.

The History of Cash for Prisoners and Commercial Lobbying: A National Scandal, by John Hirst

2009-07-13T23:43:00.008+01:00

According to Policy Transfer and Criminal Justice by Jones and Newburn: “the policy of contracting out of prisons and remand centres to commercial providers was first mooted in 1984 by the free-market think tank, the Adam Smith Institute (ASI)”.
Largely falling on deaf ears, the ASI published a second report in 1987, Privatizing Prisons: The Moral Case, written by Professor Charles H Logan. Between the two reports in 1986, the Home Affairs Select Committee (HAC), chaired by the late Conservative MP, Sir Edward Gardner, started an inquiry into the state of prisons in England and Wales. Although the privatisation of prisons was not within the remit of the inquiry, members of the HAC visited American prisons, concentrating on those private prisons operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Due to the divisions between Labour and the Tories on this issue, the topic was not covered in the main report, but was, instead, the subject of a separate report, which recommended privatising prisons.

In support of Sir Edward Gardner on this matter was the senior Tory member, Sir John Wheeler. Another Tory, the junior Home Office minister Lord Windlesham, began to lobby the Prime Minister. The Home Office minister, Lord Caithness, also visited America and upon his return advocated privatisation of prisons. John Mowlem Ltd, a large donor to the Tory party, and Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd, a large donor to the Tory party, formed a consortium with the US based CCA. Following this, the government published its Green Paper, Private Sector Involvement in the Remand System, in July 1988 and commercial lobbying subsequently reached fever pitch. No surprises then that Contract Prisons Ltd was formed with the former HAC chairman Sir Edward Gardner as chief executive. Looking back, it is difficult to see any legitimate justification for private involvement given that by the late 1980s the remand population had fallen quite significantly.

The Home Office was against the idea of privatisation of prisons and was against a provision allowing for privatisation of remand prisons in the Criminal Justice Bill, however, those with vested interests continued to lobby for it and when Margaret Thatcher put her weight behind it, the Home Office caved in. A clause was added which permitted contracting out for newly constructed remand facilities. But still those with a vested interest were not satisfied. At the committee stage, Tory backbenchers and Lord Windlesham lobbied for and succeeded with an amendment which granted the power to contract out for convicted prisoners and existing prisons and remand centres. Money talks!

According to a 1989 article in The Guardian, the "private prison network" came together on September 15, 1988, at a dinner for more than 150 people, given by the conservative Carlton Club's political committee. "All the various players were there," the article by D. Rose read: "representatives of the ASI and other right wing policy units, civil servants, John Wheeler and his colleagues, architects and people from the consortia ... a mood of satisfied expectation was beginning to emerge".

As a recent Guardian article reported: 'last week two judges in Pennsylvania were convicted of jailing some 2,000 children in exchange for bribes from private prison companies… The judges were paid $2.6m by companies belonging to the Mid-Atlantic Youth Services Corp for helping to fill its jails. This is what happens when public services are run for profit'.

In Sweden, prisons are built to accommodate 250 inmates, whereas the private sector in the UK lobbied for 3 Titan Prisons to be built each to accommodate 2,500 prisoners. Even though the Titan Prisons plan has been scrapped in favour of 5 x 1,500 place prisons, that’s still 7,500 places at £40,000 per year per inmate; that’s £60 million per year per prison of taxpayers’ money which will go into the privateers’ pockets (including private security companies on 25-year contracts and open by 2013). It is one thing to jail people if it is necessary, and quite another to jail people for profit. Whatever the legal position, there is no moral case for prison privatisation.

John Hirst blogs as Jailhouselawyer and is the Media, Legal and Political adviser to the Association of Prisoners. He spent 35 years in prison and is currently on life licence out in the community.

Justice Reinvestment by Frances Crook, Director of the Howard League for Penal Reform

2009-07-07T11:53:00.009+01:00

The Howard League for Penal Reform set up the Commission on English Prisons Today in 2007, asking it to look radically about the purpose and limits of the criminal justice system, given the crisis of overcrowding in our jails. At the beginning of July, the Commission published its final report Do Better Do Less, which advocates a reduced use of prison, a more localised criminal justice system and the introduction of community initiatives based on the concept of 'justice reinvestment'.

What is justice reinvestment? It is a concept that has come from the United States of America, where mass incarceration has come to mean that one in every 100 of the American population (over 2.4 million) is in prison and one in every 31 (around 7.3 million) adults is either in prison, on parole or under some form of correctional supervision. Such is the extremity of the situation in America, some states - even before the global financial crisis - were unable to balance their budgets because of the expensive over-use of prison.

These budgetary crises opened lawmakers to new ideas on a cross-party basis. By mapping neighbourhoods to prison populations, experts were able to identify 'million dollar blocks' - so-called because it cost a million dollars a year to incarcerate a high proportion of the block’s inhabitants. The question justice reinvestment asks is: 'what if we spent that million dollars not on prisons but on the block itself'? In states that are pioneering justice reinvestment initiatives, this means reducing the use of prison and closing jails to free up funding so that it can be spent on these high crime neighbourhoods. Coalitions involving the public, private and voluntary sectors are then mobilised to use these funds to address health, education, employment, housing and other needs that communities in ‘million dollar blocks’ have and which are the underlying causes of much of the crime in the neighbourhood.

In other words, justice reinvestment is not about alternatives within the criminal justice system, it is about alternatives outside of the criminal justice system. It recognises that the criminal justice system is a blunt tool which cannot in itself provide lasting solutions to the problem of crime.

Justice reinvestment is now gathering some momentum in the UK. The Commission's report makes it clear that the government's current approach is not working. The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) has everything that is wrong with it in its name - NOMS is national not local, centralised around Whitehall managerial targets rather than outcomes meaningful to communities, and focussed on individuals in the system rather than the places those individuals come from.

With local authorities as lead partners, we recommend that local strategic partnerships should be formed to bring together representatives from the criminal justice, health and education sectors. Prison and probation budgets would be fully devolved to their control, giving them funds for justice reinvestment initiatives. For those who commit serious and violent crimes, high security prisons would continue to be managed nationally. Crucially, communities would be placed at the heart of a criminal justice system that the public feels distinctly alienated from.

At a time when public spending will be under more pressure than ever before, it is time we chose more carefully and wisely how money is spent to make our society safer.

Frances Crook is Director of the Howard League for Penal Reform and a member of the Commission on English Prisons Today.

News - new policy announcements

2009-06-29T19:29:00.006+01:00

A number of plans and policies have been unveiled in a policy document, Building Britain's Future, and the Draft Legislative Programme. There are a series of policy shifts designed to give people more power over public services. Commentators have described the plans as amounting to the Labour Party's manifesto for the next general election.

Key announcements, in terms of the remit of the Stand Up Tall Project, are:

• Investment in housing will treble to £2.1bn. Social housing would be reformed so councils would give higher priority to local people. This will create 45,000 jobs in construction.

• From January, everyone under 25 who has been unemployed for a year will receive a guaranteed job, work experience or training place. The programme also includes plans to cut benefits of the young unemployed who refuse a job or training offer.

• New rights to one-on-one tuition will be extended into early secondary education. And from September every 16- and 17-year-olds will receive an offer of a school or college place, training or an apprenticeship.

• Adults who have been unemployed for six months will get access to jobs supported by recruitment subsidies, help setting up a business, skills training or volunteering opportunities.

• There will be a response to concerns over the policing of protests, emphasising the need for transparency and accountability in cases of alleged misconduct, and a clear commitment to proportionate public order policing.

• The Policing, Crime and Private Security Bill will see further cuts of police officer red tape by reducing the reporting requirements on stop and search forms (whilst retaining important ethnicity monitoring oversight) so that police officers can spend more time tackling the crime and less time completing forms.

• Following receipt of the Youth Citizenship Commission Report, steps will be outlined to increase the engagement of young people in politics – including whether to give further consideration to a reduction in the voting age.

• There are plans that, in time, every young person gives at least 50 hours of service to their community in their teenage years.

• In the coming years, there should be new or refurbished youth centres or other facilities in every constituency to ensure that all young people have easy access to positive activities.

• There are plans to give every community its own neighbourhood police team – a total of 3,600 teams across the country – with police spending more time out on the beat tackling crime and local priorities.

• There are plans to give local people more power to keep their neighbourhoods safe, including the right to hold the police to account at monthly beat meetings, to have a say on CCTV and other crime prevention measures, to have their views taken into account in prosecution decisions and to vote on how offenders pay back to the community.

• To ensure that officers are freed up to deliver the highest service, all the central targets for the police except one: building public confidence.

• In Community Payback, offenders now wear high visibility orange jackets as they work to pay back to the community – and they work more intensively, doing real work for several hours a day, not a few hours a month. In many areas local people can now vote online on which projects they should carry out.

• 30 pioneer areas across England and Wales are beginning to pilot a range of initiatives enabling local people to feed in views to prosecution and sentencing decisions.

• By September, members of the public will be able to get a range of online monthly information on crime, policing and justice outcomes for their area on an online ‘crime and justice map’, including a ‘scorecard’ outlining the performance of their local police. There will also be new ways for people to feed in their views, including through online petitions and voting, for example on neighbourhood policing priorities, on Community Payback and on how seized criminal assets should be spent.

• Plans will be outlined on how to strengthen our support for innovations driven by professionals that increase police effectiveness and bring them closer to communities – for example, initiatives by local neighbourhood teams including offering to walk people the last mile home if they feel unsafe, starting up e-mail groups for people to keep each other informed about burglary, or taking over shops on the high street where people can drop in and talk to the police and get crime prevention advice.

• Next month will see the launch of Operation Vigilance. This new programme, targeted on the areas facing the greatest emerging challenges, will improve co-operation and intelligence sharing between local agencies – particularly probation services and neighbourhood police teams – to tackle burglary and robbery, and monitor prolific offenders on release from prison.

• Providing greater support to struggling parents who cannot cope with a child's anti-social behaviour through ensuring that a parenting assessment is carried out on every child aged 10 to 15 who is considered for an ASBO and, for the same age group, will make a Parenting Order automatic upon breach of a child's ASBO;

• Visit the Building Britain's Future website here.
• Download the full Building Britain's Future document here.
• View the full draft legislative programme as set out to achieve these goals.

James Cleverly AM on youth crime

2009-06-25T00:05:00.004+01:00

Most young Londoners get an undeserved bad press.

Growing up is tough, growing up in a big city is tougher still and, with almost the whole of the media against you, I’m amazed that anyone gets through it.

My job, as the Mayor of London’s Youth Ambassador, is to be the connection between the Mayor and young Londoners, and to help him make life in the capital better for children and young people. Changing the attitude of the media is an important part of that.

We are well aware that there are some young people involved in some dangerous and criminal activities, but we must never forget that they are in a tiny minority. In fact, young people are the most likely to be involved in voluntary / charity work and donate more of their time than any other group in society. Far from being the problem, young people are the most likely to provide the solutions.

Here at City Hall we have put in place a number of plans to help young Londoners get the most out of life and the city. From employment training and resettlement for young offenders, expansion of the apprenticeship scheme, scholarships for children in care, and a massive investment in grass roots sport, drama and music, Boris has demonstrated his commitment to young people.

The media may well focus on violent crime, gang culture and stop and search. We are focusing on preventing young people slipping into a life of crime and giving them a way out if they do.
I’m positive about the future of this city and the children and young people who live here. My advice to you is grasp opportunities with both hands and be positive too.

James Cleverly AM is Mayor of London's Ambassador for Youth and a member of the Greater London Assembly.

Reframing the Approach to Reducing Re-offending by Trevor Philpott OBE

2009-06-22T00:31:00.004+01:00

Increasing emphasis is placed upon the need to reduce recidivism and motivate offenders towards more productive lives. In order to achieve this, efforts have focussed upon the provision of more prison places with the delivery of improved basic and vocational skills training.

Whilst the training is to be applauded as an aspiration, the reality is that patterns of continuous incarceration, unemployment, anti-social and criminal behaviour can only be interrupted by tackling the underlying causes. The majority of offenders lack the essential personal motivation and sense of self-efficacy to undertake such training, as a consequence most fail to do so, re-affirming their sense of personal failure and worthlessness. Until people are treated as unique individuals and there is understanding that offending and anti-social behaviour is triggered by emotional, human and criminogenic needs not being met, little will change.

While acknowledging that there must be a consequence for committing crime, punishment and threats alone fail to meet the fundamental needs. Rather, they re-enforce feelings of demoralisation, de-motivation and depression, re-affirming self-doubt, fear and confusion, thereby perpetuating an existing situation. It is estimated that over 70% of prisoners suffer with some form of mental health issue, many with varying levels of depression, an illness which is highly debilitating and needing of specialist treatment.

Without a radical change of approach, social exclusion, gang culture and re-offending rates will continue to rise with prisons destined to become even more overcrowded. Issues associated with drug misuse, mental health, social mobility, unemployment, academic exclusion and the fear of young people will continue to drive ever-increasing wedges into the very fabric of our communities. Above all, many individuals will remain net debtors to society and we will continue to waste vast sums of money and human resources that should be utilised in other ways.

If offenders are to realize the often painful process of moving on in their lives, most need intensive personal development, support, guidance and encouragement. In order to promote such change it is essential that the underlying philosophy and approach stems from a belief that everyone has worth and a capacity to change. To facilitate this change, we must recognise that an individual’s behaviour stems from his or her thinking and feelings about themselves and the world around them; ‘change the thinking and feelings and you change the behaviour’. For the persistent offender, this simply does not happen. Rather, a lack of family support, poor education and low self-esteem results in individuals turning to the very things that keep them from realising their dreams and ambitions. They become trapped in the cycle of drugs and crime, living on the streets, sofa surfing or in prison.

Without a more positive environment in which individuals can experience new thoughts and feelings, little will change. It is a journey that both offenders and society need to conduct together. Engaging, motivating and empowering professionals to deliver such change needs understanding, a holistic approach and appropriate training, training that is currently lacking. Importantly, by providing such investment, recidivism can be reduced and offenders helped to forge productive lives.

Trevor Philpott OBE is the Director of Life Change UK at: www.lifechangeuk.com

News - Review announced for knife murder sentences

2009-06-16T19:47:00.004+01:00

Minimum sentences for knife murders are to be reviewed, Justice Secretary Jack Straw has told the House of Commons. The current knife murder tariff is 15 years. For gun murders it is 30 years. The Secretary of State for Justice said he would examine the minimum term "starting points" for people convicted of murders involving knives in England and Wales. He told MPs he recognised there had been "considerable concerns" about the gap in minimum terms. He added: "In the light of these concerns I intend to review the provisions of schedule 21 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 with a view to deciding whether to amend it as I can by order."

Professor Jon Silverman on suspected war criminals, genocidaires in the UK, and a new report by Aegis Trust

2009-06-15T23:36:00.012+01:00

The quote: “ When I hear the word ‘culture’, I reach for my pistol ” is invariably attributed to Herman Goering, although he borrowed it from a German writer. When I hear the words “ safe haven”, I invariably think of Nazis, though not of Goering, who cheated justice by taking cyanide the night before he was due to be hanged. The ones I think of are those who fled from the ashes of Hitler’s defeated Reich and made new lives for themselves elsewhere – several hundred, at least, in the UK. In the 1990s, I investigated a number of these ‘refugees’ for the BBC and played a small part in getting two of them prosecuted under the 1991 War Crimes Act.

Since 1945, there have been other genocides, of course, most recently in Rwanda, and history has repeated itself in that some of the perpetrators have found a safe haven in the UK. In April 2009, four alleged genocidaires were freed by the High Court on the grounds that they could not be guaranteed a fair trial if they were extradited to Rwanda. OK, you might say, but in this age of universal jurisdiction for punishing crimes against humanity, why could they not be tried here ? After all, an Afghan warlord called Zardad, was convicted at the Old Bailey in 2005 of torture and hostage taking, crimes committed a decade earlier in his native land.

The answer to this question can be found in an excellent report published by the Aegis Trust, which campaigns on genocide issues ( the report, “ Suspected war criminals and genocidaires in the UK : Proposals to strengthen our laws” is available on http://www.aegistrust.org/). It highlights legal loopholes which must be plugged in the name of justice and humanity.

One is that although the crimes of which Zardad was accused are triable under UK law, most war crimes, up to and including genocide, cannot be prosecuted here if they were committed before 2001 ( that was the year in which the International Criminal Court Act passed into UK law). The other loophole is that a prosecution for the more serious crimes such as genocide/crimes against humanity require the defendant to be a UK national or resident and not someone merely taking advantage of UK hospitality. Many other countries – South Africa, Canada, the US for example – permit prosecution on the basis of ‘presence’ rather than ‘residence’.

What is the result ? A number of people are living freely here whom the UK Border Agency regard as undesirable because of gross crimes committed abroad but who can’t be extradited because they might not get a fair trial or be tortured. Yet, at the same time, the government has placed under draconian control orders another group of men whom it wishes to deport to countries such as Jordan and Algeria on the basis of paper assurances that they won’t be tortured. Frankly, it gives the word ‘anomalous’ a bad name and, more importantly, it gives the UK a bad name. The cry ‘never again’ after the Holocaust proved to be hollow. How about ‘No more safe havens for war criminals’ ?

The report by Aegis Trust "Suspected war criminals and genocidaires in the UK : Proposals to strengthen our laws” was released at midnight on Monday 15th June and is available at www.aegistrust.org.

jon.silverman@beds.ac.uk. Jon Silverman is a Professor of Media & Criminal Justice at the University of Bedfordshire. He was the BBC’s home affairs correspondent from 1989 until 2002. He is a well-known commentator on criminal justice/legal issues for a range of BBC programmes and writes on these matters for the print media.

Some serious questions to answer by Gabe Trodd

2009-06-09T21:37:00.022+01:00

Regrettably, in the early hours of Monday morning, the BNP were legitimised with a spotlight, foothold and mandate, to represent the British public in Europe with fascism. Nick Griffin, the BNP party leader, has been elected by north-west voters, whilst Andrew Brons won in Yorkshire and Humber.

Although the significance of this victory needs to be kept in some perspective for the time being, what’s clear is this: Griffin is a well educated man (he studied History and Law at Downing College, Cambridge), and is engaged with UK political strategy and positioning. Although the BNP will duly and comprehensively reveal itself to be a shambles – a blotch on the nation’s political record - at every turn, Griffin understands the dissatisfaction at Labour’s core. He’s acutely aware of the difficult questions being posed to Government policy makers across Whitehall, particularly on issues and perceptions around public services, crime, anti-social behaviour, immigration, terrorism, national identity, social housing and the UK’s relationship with Europe. Unfortunately, history reveals that no good ever came from electing the BNP or groups of that ilk, and the message that has been sent to communities across the UK, following these elections, about hope for the future, community cohesion and toleration is an unpalatable one.

Griffin has, fittingly, had years festering in the doldrums of UK political obscurity to rehearse his thin veneer of respectability, which journalists are frequently unable to scratch or unmask as he rattles off his standard lines. If given a national platform in a broadcast interview, the BNP needs heavyweight and thorough scrutiny, not just harebrained and tokenistic questions about whether the party is racist. It’s not as if one has to look far to find what the BNP are really about. The Yorkshire Post widely reported on the racial abuse conviction of Andrew Brons, but unfortunately, national publicity seemed to be largely confined to media hand-wringing, hypothesising and hyperbole, as well as gesture politics by besieged Westminster MPs, throughout the run up to the elections. Although the BNP has to be fought and exposed all the way – in pubs, town centres and in football stadiums - today’s Westminster protest raises further questions about whether the horror of the BNP cause can be publicized or even romanticized in some way, after their democratic election.

Labour came in at a 15.3 per cent on Monday. But in reality, the BNP received fewer votes than it did in 2004. Griffin won by just 1,200 votes, which is a frustrating conclusion to much of the anti-BNP campaigning. It confirms that Labour's share of the vote has disintegrated into the hands of other parties, thereby helping the BNP under a proportional system – a foretold catastrophe. It’s confusing that UKIP appears to have been the biggest beneficiaries of the Westminster expenses scandal, as a party routinely mired in scandal. But for Labour to dismiss the BNP and UKIP vote as merely a protest vote would be a grave error. Indeed, it’s also bewildering that whilst many protestations about the mass privatisation of public services and the free reign of finance corporations in the UK are marginalised within the New Labour project, it’s left to Griffin to (glibly) voice alternatives.

This week, Labour’s hard right faction has been bitterly and publicly imploding, denting the grassroots of the party and deflating the work of activists. The party should now finally emerge from the murky shadows of the latter stages of Blairism, as a fresh political force, in tune with its roots and history. This would surely go some way to undoing Griffin’s work.

In some ways, the BNP support is a regional problem rather than a class problem, especially in former industrial and mill areas of the north of England, which have both substantial Asian minorities and high unemployment. Beyond the recession and furore around the expenses scandal (cited by politicians everywhere), the BNP vote is wrapped up in issues around crime and the widespread perceptions of it, antisocial behaviour and the widespread perceptions of it, the threat of terrorism and the widespread perceptions of it, Europe and the widespread perceptions of it, the provisions for social housing and the final death throes of the New Labour project.

For Labour, big discussions are needed about the direction of the party - leadership/personality issues are secondary and subsequent to this – because what the election results indicate is that Labour have given an instinctively left-leaning British public, profoundly enthralled by the rise and potent political philosophy of Obama, nothing to vote for. Victories by the BNP, UKIP and Cameron are by default, not because there’s an appetite for right-wing rule.

Make no mistake, amidst low turnout and apathy towards the EU Parliament, the rightward drift is reflected across the continent. The centre-right European Peoples' party (EEP) cleaned up, winning 265 seats, while the centre-left Socialist group was decimated. Far-right parties also did perilously well across Europe. This will pose difficult issues about the defensive and protectionist stance of European citizens during a recession, which left-leaning parties will have to take onboard. It’s certainly going to take some thought.

In many ways, Monday was a message from the British public about the state of Europe. The problem is that the European Parliament is even more distant and anonymous than Westminster, and many people understand precious little about the working and benefits of Brussels. British interest in Europe is frequently framed as a defensive fight against ‘red lines’ that are being coveted and disregarded by the rest of Europe – this needs reviewing, in terms of the message being sent back to the UK. It’s also worth pointing out that:

Only fellow EU citizens – not the rest of the world – have a right to live and work in other EU countries.
More British citizens live in other EU countries than EU citizens live in Britain.
Many Eastern Europeans came to Britain after their countries joined the EU four years ago. Many are now returning (currently more are leaving than coming).
The Poles and others who worked in Britain have, in total, paid more into Britain’s exchequer than they have received in benefits.
We gained a workforce that has been educated and trained at the expense of someone else’s taxpayers and we used them often to do jobs where no British workers were available.
In diplomatic terms, any notion that Britain can be an isolated superpower, contributing to global discussions alongside the power and interest of China, USA, India, Russia and a unified Europe is nothing more than delusional.
Britain’s special relationship is also built on our standing in Europe, amongst other things.

Looking ahead, the Stand Up Tall Project welcomes the appointment of Alan Johnson as Home Secretary and in moving forward, this project will look at the questions being asked of policy makers about crime, anti-social behaviour, education and citizenship, when it comes to the BNP's support in the UK.

MPs in knives 'arms race' warning

2009-06-02T09:49:00.008+01:00

The Home Affairs Select Committee have said a knife-crime "arms race" has developed with young people carrying knives because they fear others may do so too, echoing many of the views put forward by contributors to the Stand Up Tall Project.

The Home Affairs Committee, chaired by Keith Vaz, a contributor to this project, said knife carrying was driven by teenagers lacking faith in police and parents. The MPs said knife crime plans should target complex root causes in deprived inner cities in England and Wales.

They also called on the government to ban violent video games from secure units and young offender institutions

Fatal stabbings comprise a tiny minority of all knife offences and over the last decade they have accounted for roughly a third of all homicides.

It was said this "arms race" was partly worsened by sensationalist media coverage.
Committee chairman Keith Vaz MP said: "Young people carry knives because they fear that others are carrying knives.

"This spiralling of knife possession puts all young people at risk. Too many tragic deaths have occurred because of this. We have to stop this arms race.

"We need a new tack here, at least partly based on making young people feel safer and reducing the exposure to violence in their lives.

"We were impressed by the work of the 'gang exit' groups we spoke to, and by the success of Youth Inclusion Programmes."

The "high levels" of knife violence in recent years is linked to gang violence, the MPs said. But cutting the supply of knives is unlikely to stop knife violence because most stabbings are carried out with kitchen knives, they said

The committee called for more prison programmes to tackle offending behaviour and "interventions" with young people in danger of more serious offending. These should even involve "babies" and "toddlers" from dysfunctional families, the MPs said.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said: "This report recognises the hard work taking place up and down the country... It is also encouraging to see that the latest statistics show that the number of deaths from stabbings fell from 59 in the last quarter of 2007 to 52 in the last quarter of 2008."

News Snippets

2009-05-26T21:05:00.013+01:00

Tuesday 26th May
The UK media reports that women and girls are to blame for one in four violent attacks
Reports suggest that more than half a million assaults were either carried out by a girl or woman last year or involved a female as part of a group. Many newspapers suggest half of all violent attacks involve alcohol, fuelling fears of the impact of binge-drinking among women. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/5382520/Women-and-girls-to-blame-for-one-in-four-violent-attacks.html

Monday 18th May
'Phoney' UK drug war criticised
Right-wing think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies called Labour's £1.5bn-a-year anti-drugs policy an "expensive failure". It said the UK's policy of spending most of its drug budget on treatment was less effective than spending more on prevention and enforcement.

The Home Office said the report "inaccurately portrays the impact of the government's drug strategy". A spokesman said overall drug use was at its "lowest level" since measurements began.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8054890.stm

Tuesday 12th May:
The Prime Minister gives a key-note speech at the Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership Conference in London:
http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page19275
In response, Sunder Katwala, General Secretary of the Fabian Society, provides some sharp commentary at his blog here:
http://www.nextleft.org/2009/05/new-crimes-and-new-causes-of-crime.html

Monday 11th May:
Right-wing think tank Policy Exchange targets ‘causes’ of crime.
The government has failed to carry out its election pledge to tackle the causes of crime, says an expert on crime reduction. Professor Irwin Waller said UK spending and policy had focused on enforcement - police, courts and prisons - and neglected crime prevention measures.
A report for Policy Exchange, a right-wing think tank, estimated crime would cost the UK £78bn this year - equal to £3,000 per home.

The Home Office said the government was determined to stay on the front foot in keeping down crime. A spokesman said: "Statistics published last month actually show that overall crime is stable or falling and the risk of being a victim remains historically low.
"But we know we are facing some new challenges. That's why we are focusing our experience to tackle these head-on with millions of pounds invested in both prevention and enforcement."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8043138.stm