On Monday Sadiq Kahn gave a speech to Progress. What was outstanding about the evening was the quality of the questions from the audience. Whatever the outcome of Labour’s policy review when it comes to criminal justice is, Sadiq Kahn has had opportunity to listen to the views of the experts.
Progress can take credit in facilitating that. However, the sheer quality of the policy debate served to highlight the political difficulties in selling to the electorate whatever Labour’s criminal justice policy is to become.
As a solicitor, I have some knowledge of how our criminal justice system works and have written for Progress and LabourList on criminal justice from both a practical and jurisprudential perspective. Crime is a special interest for me but not my area of legal expertise; my views are as much motivated by my childhood and teenage experiences in the estates of Belfast and Carrickfergus or my later life in London as they are by my criminal law university education. The expertise displayed this week was breathtaking; the debate was of the highest level and so it should be. The complexity of the subject of criminal justice demands the attention of such fine minds. However, as I listened and learned, I couldn’t help but wonder that even if Sadiq Kahn and his team can come up with a policy approach that gains the broad support of the criminal justice policy intelligentsia (Sadiq kept his cards close to his chest), how do we sell that to the electorate? It’s just so damned complicated!
That was after the all the brilliance of ‘Tough on Crime, Tough on the Causes of Crime’, a slogan so successful that it’s almost as if that was the entirety of Labour’s policy at the time. It was a wonderfully simple slogan that summed up what each member of the electorate felt it wanted. Its simplicity was also its weakness as it was open to interpretation. In 1997 aged 17, I thought ‘Tough on the Causes of Crime’ meant tackling issues that were of particular pertinence to a teenager like the closing of youth clubs, poor education and lack of job opportunities for the young. When it transpired that Tony Blair meant catching them young and teaching them a lesson before they get worse, I scoffed and felt betrayed by Labour. To work, that approach requires a community to respect the authority of the courts and police and many of my peers and their families (regardless of their politics) did not. It wasn’t unknown for mothers (not mine I hasten to add) to say ‘Ewe goin’ out riotin’ son? Make sure ewe don’t get yerself lifted!’. Throughout the UK, it seems that ASBOs were a badge given by the government that evidenced you were successful in challenging those held responsible for life’s ills; an incentive, not a discouragement. To my ears, Monday’s audience seemed to agree with the view that it’s better to target resources at treating the problems that cause people to start and repeat offending rather than on chastising them once the offence has been committed, the debate focusing on the detail rather than the principle.
A few initial catchphrases were sounded out eg ‘Tough on Crime, Right on Rehabilitation’ or ‘Tough on Crime, Right on Reoffending’. These certainly sound like a shift in what appears to be the right direction but it is again very simple and open to interpretation and, quite frankly, not a big enough shift anyway. One question that was asked is ‘will the current hacking scandal fundamentally change how policy is communicated to the public’? Maybe it will but I doubt it will be a fundamental change. Labour will still need to sell extremely complicated policy in a manner that sells papers and causes people to read website stories during their lunch break. The popular media doesn’t focus on criminal justice through complicated issues eg rehabilitation without using imprisonment or using longer sentences to allow the time for rehabilitation, investigative trials as opposed to adversarial trials or the appropriateness of IPPs. That doesn’t sell and is largely confined to columnists, editorials and the weekly newspaper/magazines.
For example, when controversy surrounded Ken Clarke’s proposed tariff reductions, the press focused specifically on sentencing rapists. When looking at the complicated issue of self-defence, the media focused on the narrow issue of using lethal force against burglars and not, for example, on the criminality of using lethal force against someone whose actions or inactions are not criminal but will result in harm or death to you or a third party. It took the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone to truly bring that crime to the fore. The popular media has a tendency to focus on the public’s emotional response to specific crimes and whether or not government policy, which has to cover all criminal activity, addresses the public’s anger and fear.
Talking to people on the doorstep on this issue, I don’t think using words like rehabilitating or community service are vote losers. People seem to agree that the carrot is as important as the stick even if they feel the stick is underutilised. They are not really vote winners though as the public’s initial response is fear and anger at injustice until they give a matter further consideration. We should trust the public to do so. It’s a matter of asking the right questions. Someone shooting a burglar in their home might be deemed ok by Joe Public, but what if that same person was asked ‘is it ok to shoot someone who barged into your home seeking safety from an attacker?’ A different answer perhaps but clearly, in those confused moments, the frightened homeowner might not be able to tell the difference between a panicking burglar and a panicking victim. What should Joe Public the homeowner then do? The public can and do appreciate the nuances of these issues better than the media present them. They do so every day, on juries.
My own view, for what it is worth, is that we shouldn’t reduce whatever Labour’s criminal justice policy becomes to one simple catchphrase. The public are aware that criminal justice is extremely complicated and should be credited with not expecting our policy to be summed up in one catchphrase. The policy should be announced and debated at a high level of detail by those who live and breathe criminal justice policy and if Labour has got it wrong, that will soon become apparent. If Labour has got it right, that too will become clear. Either way, by media osmosis, that view of the policy world will filter to the general electorate and influence its views. The key, however, as we get close to the next general election, is to tap into both the emotional response of the day to the issues highlighted by the popular media (something Labour has done a lot of) as well as the willingness of the public to give serious consideration to the issue if asked the right questions (which Labour has been less successful at). Easier said than done but if we get the policy right, then hopefully the way to do that will then be clearer. Maybe we simply have a series of policy statements specific to certain issues to be identified that are of particular concern to the public at the relevant time that we stick to from the doorstep to the tabloid? Labour can be ‘Tough on Crime, Right on Reoffending’. It just shouldn’t put it in those terms.
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Mark Rowney (@markrowney) is a lawyer and member of Progress