Election 2015 Party Policy Guide: Crime and youth justice
Derren Hayes
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Conservatives
- Overhaul the system of police cautions and ensure offenders have conditions, such as victim redress, attached to their punishment
- Create a blanket ban on all new psychoactive substances to protect young people from exposure to "legal highs"
- Make available to all courts in England and Wales sobriety orders, enforced through new alcohol monitoring tags
- Deploy new technology to monitor offenders in the community and to bring persistent offenders to justice more quickly
- Introduce a new semi-custodial sentence for prolific criminals, which gives a short spell in custody to change behaviour
- Extend the scope of the Unduly Lenient Scheme, so a wider range of sentences can be challenged
- Review the legislation governing hate crimes, including the case for extending the scope of the law to cover crimes committed against people on the basis of disability, sexual orientation or gender identity
- Explore how new technology may enable more women with young children to serve their sentence in the community
Labour
- Abolish police and crime commissioners
- Introduce a statutory local policing commitment that guarantees neighbourhood policing in every community
- Replace cautions with payback orders for low-level anti-social behaviour
- Pilot a new approach to 18- to 20-year-old offenders, incentivising local authorities, police and probation services to work together to identify those at risk of drifting into crime and, where possible, divert them away from it
- Embed restorative justice across the youth justice system
Liberal Democrats
- Extend the role of the Youth Justice Board to all offenders aged under 21, give them the power to commission mental health services and devolve youth custody budgets to councils
- Prevent looked-after children and young people being drawn into the criminal justice system unnecessarily by promoting restorative justice
- Improve the safeguards in police stop and search powers with tighter guidance and require police to wear body cameras in certain areas
- Conduct a full review of the causes of the overrepresentation of black and minority ethnic groups in the penal system
- Create a Women's Justice Board to improve rehabilitation of female offenders
- Adopt the default position that public servants rather than commercial organisations should provide detention, prison, immigration enforcement and secure units
- In reforming the system, legislate to end the use of imprisonment for possession of drugs for personal use, diverting resources towards tackling organised drug crime instead
- Replace police and crime commissioners with police boards
Commentary
Law and order has taken a surprisingly low profile in the election to date, perhaps as a result of falling crime figures over recent years.
When it comes to children and young people, there is a general recognition among the parties that greater emphasis on restorative justice and diversion services is the way to go rather than increasing the use of custody.
The Lib Dems would like to see the Youth Justice Board expand its remit to cover young people up to 21-years-old, and have the ability to devolve funding to local authorities. The aim would be to extend the rehabilitation focus in the youth justice system to young adults, in the hope it can tackle high rates of reoffending.
Labour is advocating taking a similar approach in an effort to prevent young offenders graduating to the adult penal system.
The Tories want to see custody used as a short, sharp, shock, with more offenders - including mothers of young children - monitored in the community through better use of technology.
