We can learn from innovations in health to tackle the causes of crime
By Kieran Brett
—Yvette Cooper’s impressive stewardship as shadow home secretary has maintained Labour’s credentials as the party of law and order. Labour has not lurched back to a leftist position on this issue and that is to be welcomed. A key question now is: where next for crime reduction?
Despite its aspirations, New Labour was not tough enough on the causes of crime. Tony Blair began to understand this in later years when he introduced policies such as the Family Intervention Projects to reduce antisocial behaviour, but we did not go far enough. While the party introduced radical reforms in other public services such as the NHS, we did not do the same in law and order. The coalition deserves credit for introducing supply-side reforms to help reduce reoffending and Labour should welcome these. But there are two areas from health reform that we can learn from to go much further to really tackle crime at its roots. These are prevention, and supply-side reform backed by strong incentives.
Analysis by the Prison Reform Trust shows that male and female prisoners are disproportionately drawn from particular backgrounds. For example, 27 per cent of prisoners were taken into care as a child and 65 per cent have numeracy skills at or below level one, the level expected of an 11-year-old. In health, we have increasingly focused on prevention; we should now explore a similar approach to reducing crime. Our focus has rightly been on reoffending, but we also need to concentrate on ‘preoffending’ based on those groups who we know are most at risk of offending. There are powerful tools in health to identify people at risk of hospitalisation which enables different and often lower-cost interventions. Labour should trigger a review to develop similar tools for reducing crime. If we can identify and support people earlier we have a hope of helping them choose a better life.
This new focus on prevention leads on to the second lesson from health: reform of the supply side. Too often in criminal justice policy, Labour looked to the state to provide services, but in health we began to develop innovative relationships with the private and third sectors. We should engage them in an open conversation about what role they could play in helping provide these new models of crime prevention alongside the public sector. Providers should then be paid, in part, by results. We should also mimic improvements in the NHS when reforming policing. The party should consider foundation police forces which are given significant freedoms and powers in return for a radical shift towards prevention and all-round excellent performance. Over time foundation forces could be given powers to take over underperforming forces to allow excellence to spread. The new police and crime commissioners should also receive powerful financial incentives to prevent crime. Such a combination would drive fresh ideas and innovation.
In 1997 we entered government with the pledge to be ‘tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime’ but we did not get the balance right. We should not shrink from the first part of the formulation but Labour needs to work harder to support some of our most vulnerable people from following a career in crime. Compassion demands that we do nothing less.
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Kieran Brett is a former special adviser on home affairs and health
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Cooper and Labour’s case (and general discussion of crime) is not helped by the neanderthal pronouncements on crime and sentencing from Sadiq Khan.
Just one problem: Not every criminal fits into the cosy brackets of “been in care, can’t read etc.” along with the obvious that’s no excuse.
The other omission relates to Community Safety Strategies most of which have the initiatives suggested but whose key objectives have been allowed to fail.
I’d also be extremely interested to know what “significant freedoms” the author would like to give to foundation police forces because we have all seen the noises made when the Police use the powers they have which the majority cry out for to be used but the idiot fringe minority protest against the most.
Would the ‘significant freedoms’ be dismissed as oh well it’s OK for example to use water cannon because “it’s the Foundation Police doing it” and if that gets a yes would we then say it’s still fine now they are running what were “under-performing forces” to use them.
Would the Foundation Police areas criminals not just simply move into area that doesn’t have these ‘significant freedoms’?
Would the idea simply not create a two tier Police Service until the Foundations have taken other the ‘normal’ Police in full.
Is the author simply just asking for the Police to be tougher when if they and their partners used the powers they already have in place in full (which includes pre-offending tools) there simply wouldn’t be any need to do it?