Labour Party Conference: 'PCCs best placed to tackle cycle of offending'

Vaz, Labour MP for Leicester East, said PCCs are best placed to oversee local efforts to prevent youth crime and tackle entrenched offending behaviour that often spans generations of families.

Vaz was speaking at a Nacro fringe meeting on youth justice policy the day after Labour’s shadow chancellor Ed Balls had announced the party’s intention to do away with PCCs if elected, instead investing the £50m saved in frontline policing and giving local communities a greater say on priorities for tackling crime.

Vaz said: “I’m sorry to say that our shadow chancellor has said we will do away with PCCs. That is not the view of the [home affairs] committee. We should get the best bits out of PCCs and reform the model.

“We need to do something about breaking the cycle of offending. PCCs are the right people to do this because their remit is broader than just crime reduction. It is what they or their successor bodies should be doing.”

PCCs set local priorities for policing and reducing crime in each police force area, help allocate budgets and hold chief constables to account. A key reform of the coalition government, commissioners were first elected in October 2012 for a four-year term.

Tony Lloyd, PCC for Greater Manchester, told the meeting that in his area efforts to tackle repeat offending had focused on finding alternatives to custody for women offenders in an effort to reduce the harmful impact it can have on vulnerable children.

He said: “A mother will get a short sentence of say three months, but it might result in her children being taken into care, the loss of a tenancy and a struggle to get back into social housing and get the kids returned home. We’re trying to give the courts alternatives to prison in the first place.”

Instead a restorative justice model has been introduced in 10 areas across Greater Manchester police force that challenges offender behaviour and aims to give the women support for the factors contributing to their offending.

Lloyd added that he hoped to extend the model to young adult male offenders in an effort to divert more 18- to 25-year-olds away from custody, as this was a group that had “horrendous” outcomes.