David Cameron' s speech on crime: Politics live blog - The Guardian

And here is some pre-reaction (or whatever you call response to an event that has not yet happened) to the David Cameron speech.

From Mark Leech, editor of Converse, the national newspaper for prisoners

I very much welcome this revisiting of criminal justice policy, but equally I am deeply sceptical about whether David Cameron can actually deliver his ?Tough But Intelligent? criminal justice agenda because, whether you call it the ?Rehabilitation Revolution? as he does, or as Tony Blair called it 15 years ago ?Tough on Crime Tough on the Causes of Crime?, it is ultimately about the same thing in practice; rhetoric about reducing crime.

And, while Tony Blair had all the resources of Government behind him in 1997 to deliver his tough on crime tough on the causes of crime policy, we no longer have that luxury ? and even with all the resources, Blair gave us 3,000 new criminal offences, 25,000 more prisoners and he failed to address entirely the Tough on the Causes of Crime part of the policy at all.

Blair left us with even more of the high-crime, inner-city housing estates that existed when he came to power, and with precisely the same degree of unemployment, school exclusions, poor parenting, drug misuse and gang cultures existing when he left.

Forced by a lack of resources to fund his policy Cameron is turning to the private and voluntary sector to help him deliver his ?Tough But Intelligent? policy to be announced later today, relying on a ?Payments By Results? method of funding it ? but behind the scenes I can tell you there are huge arguments about what the ?Payment By Results? mechanism actually means ? what ?results? amount to ?results?, who assesses those ?results? and what level of ?payment? are we talking about here?

From Vicki Helyar-Cardwell, director of the Criminal Justice Alliance

This speech was an opportunity to regain the momentum promised at the start of the coalition government to drive forward a genuine rehabilitation revolution to cut crime, prioritise prevention and reduce the damaging levels of reoffending. The danger is the intelligent bit gets lost at the expense of sounding tough.

A truly smart approach would be to focus on offenders making amends for their wrongdoing, treating drug and alcohol addictions that can fuel crime and getting ex-offenders back into real work. Much of this relies on wider society ? organisations and people outside of the criminal justice system. The real strength of the Prime Minister?s 2006 so-called ?hug a hoodie speech? is that it recognised that criminal justice and social justice are inextricably linked. Yet several years on, the criminal justice system still often picks up the pieces when others have failed, the high levels of children in care who end up in our youth justice system are a telling example of this ...

Criminal Justice Alliance organisations, working in prisons and with offenders and their families in the community, report that prison overcrowding and budget cuts mean rehabilitation is being undermined. Making governors more accountable for what happens after prison is welcome, but this will backfire without efforts to curb huge prison overcrowding that blights much of the positive work in prisons. Overcrowding extracts a heavy price from prisoners, prison staff and voluntary sector working to cut reoffending, and ultimately harms communities to which ex-prisoners will return.

The Prime Minister?s speech comes the week after the Chief Inspector of Prisons said that in order to deliver a rehabilitation revolution, government needs to reduce numbers of people in prison or invest more in prison budgets.

From Isabel Hardman at Coffee House

It?s clear the government has had a bad week when the Prime Minister pops up on a Monday with a crowd-pleasing policy announcement. Recent re-launches have been shared by senior Lib Dems and Tories following the collapse of Lords reform, for example, to demonstrate that the Coalition is still working well. But today, the Lib Dems are nowhere to be seen: the Prime Minister?s big crime announcement is a response to a terrible week for the Conservative party, rather than the coalition as a whole.

From Tim Montgomerie at ConservativeHome

The speech is being presented by some in the media as a response to the Government?s difficult week but, in reality, the speech and whole approach has long been in the pipeline. Chris Grayling was thinking about a rehabilitation revolution when he was Shadow Home Secretary. Working with Nick Herbert and the Centre for Social Justice the Tory leadership was interested in reducing reoffending rates for most of the last seven years.

From Sadiq Khan, the shadow justice secretary

There is nothing intelligent or tough about cutting frontline police officers, reducing the power of judges to give tough sentences or cutting support for innocent victims of crime.

This is nothing more than a smokescreen to try and cover up Andrew Mitchell losing his job on Friday and 29 wasted months of dithering on law and order. This out of touch Government must think the public are stupid - it?s these kind of actions that makes the public so cynical about politicians.

Rehashed announcements, rushed legislation and ill-thought out and evidence-free policies risk undermining public confidence in our criminal justice system.

This is empty rhetoric from a weak Prime Minister of an incompetent government, designed only to keep rebellious Tory MPs happy rather than what works in keeping our communities safe.

I'm off to the Number 10 briefing now. I'll post again after 11.30am.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2012/oct/22/david-cameron-speech-crime-live

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