The Government Wants More Criminals Out in the Streets

Our authorities are committed to trying everything but the solution

JAMES LACHRYMOSE

In modern Britain, there is a disconnection between political rhetoric and political action. Nowhere is this more acute than in the domain of crime and punishment. Our rulers threaten ever more draconian crackdowns. Labour promises to castrate criminals. The Conservatives pledge to terrorise wrongdoers. Then they quietly continue down the path of making sure no one is ever punished for their actions.

Two bills capture this dichotomy. The first is the Crime and Policing Bill. Running to 444 pages, it contains a litany of new crimes and powers. Criminal Behaviour Orders, having replaced Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, are in turn replaced by “Respect Orders”. Having just legalised begging, the government now seeks to criminalise managing beggars with up to 51 weeks in prison. The maximum punishment for assaulting a retail worker is also raised to 51 weeks.

Yet at the same time, the Sentencing Bill is making its way through Parliament. This would require almost all sentences of less than 12 months to be suspended. In essence, unless you are both criminally inclined enough to immediately reoffend, and stupid enough to be caught, there is no way you will see the inside of a jail cell.

It needs to be stressed how few convicted criminals go to prison at the moment

The public has not realised how dramatic Labour’s proposal is. There is almost no pushback in the mainstream. The Conservatives had the exact same idea before the election, and the sentencing review was written by Tory David Gauke (who tried to do it in 2019). The media and NGOs are largely supportive. But it is extreme. “Short sentences” represent 60 per cent of custodial sentences — about 49,000 people a year. The number of convicts walking free from court is about to drastically increase, and you can expect their behaviour to adjust accordingly.

It needs to be stressed how few convicted criminals go to prison at the moment. Less than 7 per cent of convictions result in an immediate custodial sentence. To give some context:

• Only 54 per cent of convicted robbers go to prison…
• 43.7 per cent of those convicted of GBH
• 37.5 per cent of those convicted of sexual assault
• 30 per cent of those convicted of exposure or voyeurism
• 28.4 per cent of fraudsters
• 17.3 per cent of those caught with indecent images of children
• and only 31 per cent of people convicted for possessing a knife go to prison.

To focus on knife crime, the average sentence of the few who are jailed for unlawful possession of a knife in public is 7.5 months. The result of this law change will be that almost no one goes to prison for carrying a knife. Gang members are not stupid, and absolutely will notice this. Carrying a knife is about to become a lot less risky for Britain’s criminals, and we can expect an uptick in stabbings to follow. The same thing was seen when Theresa May, as Home Secretary, curtailed police stop-and-search: criminals realised there was no risk to carrying a knife, and behaved appropriately.

Luckily, Labour knows how to stop teenagers stabbing each other to death; they’re going to make your life more difficult. The Regime is totally averse to ever holding perpetrators responsible for their actions (i.e., by putting them in jail). The solution is always to create a complex, finicky, bureaucracy that inconveniences ordinary people in the hope that criminals will also be slowed down.

A large part of the Crime and Policing Bill is devoted to complex new regulations around the sale of knives online. Most search services and user-to-user services (meaning social networks) will need to appoint a “content manager” who the police can ask to get posts about knives taken down. The content manager can be personally fined £10,000 if they don’t comply appropriately. Baroque new crimes are to be created regulating the sale of cutlery online (“Offence of courier delivering bladed product sold by UK seller to collection point”; “Handing over bladed products sold by UK seller at collection point”; “Offence of delivery business delivering crossbows or parts of crossbows to residential premises in England or Wales on behalf of UK seller”). Most amusingly, every time a customer buys two sets of knives in a month (or six individual knives), sellers will be required to report this to the authorities. Argos, Amazon, and John Lewis are to be ordered to inform on their customers’ shopping habits, to presumably sit on a police database somewhere.

Unfortunately, we will have to endure our government trying everything but the solution

From what I understand, this policy is intended to identify suppliers of knives who buy from legitimate retailers, then sell them on to teens. It doesn’t seem to occur to policymakers that criminals will just buy 5 a month, or just use kitchen knives — which are already the most commonly used weapon in murders. It all encapsulates the failure of the last 30 years of criminal justice policy. The authorities start from the position that fewer people should be in prison, and work backwards from that. When things get worse, they impose ever-more baroque and bizarre policies on the entire nation. They would rather pile problems on the law-abiding than admit some people just need locking up.

The mystery of “how to tackle crime” has been solved. Country after country has shown that by persecuting criminals, you free society from violence and theft. Unfortunately, we will have to endure our government trying everything but the solution.

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This article (The government wants more criminals out in the streets) was created and published by The Critic and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author James Lachrymose