Law & Order
People’s lives are being ruined by crime and they don’t feel safe in their own homes or their neighbourhood. Yet too many criminals are getting away without being caught or punished – and those who are caught are sent to prison and come out, unreformed, ready to commit more crimes. There’s an endless cycle that makes us all less safe. Governments are always talking tough but nothing seems to change. Liberal Democrats are the only party which will cut crime because we will focus on what works. That means catching more criminals and making them pay for what they have done. It means making prison work to put them back on the straight and narrow, and involving communities in the fight against crime and anti-social behaviour. It means improving crime prevention and crime detection, which we know work to cut crime.
Catching criminals with 3,000 more police on the beat – Everyone knows the way to cut crime is to catch people who commit crime – and we need more police out on the streets to do it. By scrapping pointless ID cards, we will pay for 3,000 more police, and cut bureaucracy so they’re out fighting crime not filling in forms. We will stop posturing on penalties and concentrate on catching criminals. We will also make police work better by giving local people a direct say in policing and by tackling outdated or bad working practices.
Crack down on gun and knife crime – We will make hospitals share information with the police so they know where gun and knife crime is happening. The police can then target these “hot spots” for stop and search to find these illegal weapons and destroy them. In Cardiff, where this model has been piloted, this practice has reduced violent crime by 40%.
Make prisoners work to pay compensation to victims – It is only fair that criminals pay for the damage they cause. We will make prisoners work and contribute from their prison wages to a compensation fund for victims. At the moment, prisons are just colleges of crime. Making prisoners work (as well as educating and training them) will give them the skills they need to ‘go straight’ when they are released.
Justice in your neighbourhood – We will give people a direct say in how petty criminals and those who engage in anti-social behaviour are punished in their area. This will be achieved by the creation of Neighbourhood Justice Panels, like the one run by Liberal Democrats in Somerset where 95% of offenders have been turned away from further crimes.
Tackle terrorism – It’s vital to convict terrorists rather than putting entire communities under suspicion. We will scrap Control Orders and replace them with measures designed to secure convictions of terror suspects. We also support efforts to make it easier to charge suspects genuinely suspected of terrorism through a temporary lowering of the ‘threshold test’, the use of the post-charge questioning and intercept evidence. We will also reach out to the communities most at risk of radicalisation to improve the relationships between them and the police and increase the flow of intelligence.
Mole Valley enjoys a relatively low crime rate, but violent crime in the country overall has doubled in the past eight years. I strongly support the Lib Dem policy of scrapping the Government’s plans for ID cards and investing the huge amount of money they would cost on
recruiting 3,000 more police officers.
I am also a big supporter of our policy on community sentences. 92% of youth offenders who serve short prison sentences reconvict. One of our policies is to replace short sentences (ie those of a few weeks or months) with longer and rigorous community sentences for offenders who pose no threat to their community and who have committed only a minor offence.
Britain has one of the highest re-offending rates in Europe. This is appalling. Research suggests that offenders are 3 times more likely to re-offend if they do not participate in education and training, and only 1 in 5 of our prisoners are literate enough to complete a job application form when they leave prison. It is therefore not surprising that only 10% of them enter employment on release, and many re-offend.
I feel passionately about our policy to improve the education and training that prisoners receive. The Liberal Democrats want to expand young offender institutions and establish them as secure education and training centres, so that offenders aged under 21 have access to full-time education and training. We want education inspection bodies to assess prison education to ensure it is of good quality, and we would massively expand the opportunities for prisoners to take part in prison work schemes. These policies would mean that when offenders are released from prison, they are much more likely to pursue a career rather than a crime.
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