The criminal justice system is in crisis. The police, probation, prisons and the courts are all facing cuts to budgets, increasing workloads, inadequate pay deals and creeping civilisation and privatisation. And all at a time when the police are being dumped more and more with responsibility for resolving the many social and economic problems faced by our communities, particularly the inner cities. Indeed the crisis is so great that all the trade unions and the Police Federation have come together in a campaign which will include a lobby of parliament.
Against this backdrop, the government claims that crime is falling. But is it? The British Crime Survey, which for years was thought to be the most competent barometer of offending rates, and has repeatedly shown falls in crime, could be flawed. My understanding, based on conversations with probation officers over the last 12 months, is that crime in inner city estates and tower blocks is vastly underreported, often because they are
impenetrable to researchers.
For years, figures have excluded crimes against young people. The official police figures also show a general fall, but the experience of most police officers suggests that the situation is quite different. Crime may well be falling in suburbia, but the situation is much more complex in the inner cities where particular crimes such as robbery and offences of violence appear to be at best static but probably increasing. It appears that those of us who have wealth are increasingly able to provide security for ourselves; those without it are left relatively defenceless.
As a result of education budgets being devolved to individual schools, the money left for youth services is virtually zero in some areas. Alongside this, there is a paucity of assistance for those with mental health problems, the homeless and for other at-risk groups, which means that police officers are increasingly the first point of contact with the homeless, the mentally ill, the vulnerable, those involved in antisocial behaviour, drug users, those with alcohol problems, and those involved in domestic violence.
Yet the powers of the police to intervene positively in these situations are extremely limited. Because of the government's preoccupation with targets and key performance indicators, intervention cannot be justified unless there is an outcome, in particular arrest and charge. The dilemmas facing the criminal justice system are alarming. Following the murder of Etem Celebi, who I knew personally, in east London last November, I had numerous conversations with local police and youth workers. What they told me was that tension between geographical gangs in the area had never been greater, and the number of children for whom the only solution was now control, containment and eventual incarceration was on the increase.
Probation officers who once had caseloads of 30 and knew the individuals personally, now talk of 80, 100, or even more. The response of management to this crisis has been to increase the caseload limit and to advise staff to spend less time with less serious offenders. However time is made available to input endless data into computers to meet the demands for information and monitoring from the Ministry of Justice.
The prison population has now reached 93,000 for the UK, an all-time record. In order to cope prison activities cease on Fridays and do not open up again until Monday morning. Rather than engaging in education and skilling for work, prisoners sit watching television screens or are confined to their cells.
But there is a way forward which would bring workload relief to everyone in the system, and increase the number of children who can avoid falling into crime.
At the moment there is no mandatory duty on local authorities to prevent gun, knife and related crime among the young, and no duty on central government to ensure it is adequately funded. All efforts are left to the voluntary sector, often underfunded, or to progressive local authorities.
This is a glaring fault in the system What is needed is a statutory duty on local authorities to provide youth services, to improve the infrastructure of problematic estates, to increase equality of opportunity to education and work, and to provide counselling and family support for individuals in trouble, and for families wherever there is need.
I recently drafted a bill which could make this a reality. It would force central government to ensure that local authorities had funds to carry out a range of duties which would be prioritised and delivered locally. Whether those services were delivered by the authority themselves, the voluntary sector or any other providers, including the private sector, would be decided in the locality.
Lord Ramsbotham, the former chief inspector of prisons, will be introducing the bill in the House of Lords soon. In effect there would be a move away from the obsession with criminalising behaviour, incarceration and punishment towards health and treatment. This could not happen overnight, but should be planned over the life of two parliaments. At the end of that time there would be massive savings to the justice and health budgets, hundreds of thousands less victims of crime, fewer gangs, fewer individuals reliant on drugs and alcohol as a means of self-medicating, fewer killings and proper services for the vulnerable.
Finally, this could be partially funded in the short term by abandoning ID cards, and in the long term by a vast reduction in budgets. This in turn would free up police officers, probation officers, and others to contribute towards the social cohesion that our communities desperately require.