Cutting Crime by Catching Criminals

Cutting Crime:
Catching Criminals With Better Policing
Proposals for Policing and Criminal Justice from the Liberal Democrat
Justice and Home Affairs Team
Cutting Crime: Catching Criminals With Better Policing
Foreword
Chris Huhne MP
Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary
There is too much crime, and particularly too much violent crime. Crime hurts some of the
poorest and most vulnerable members of our society, who have the fewest resources to
withstand its arbitrary and unpredictable effects. All the political parties can agree about the
objective. We all want to cut crime and improve personal security. The only question is how.
The Liberal Democrats have a fundamentally different approach to that of Labour and the
Conservative consensus. We are resolutely in favour of what works. We want effective action to
cut crime, not political posturing. We will follow the evidence and the research, not prejudice
and hunch.
The most striking feature of the national debate about crime is how removed it has become
from the hard evidence about what works. The Labour government has presided over an
enormous increase in the prison population, even though its own expensively-funded research
from leading international criminologists shows that more prison does not cut crime. Its policy
can only be explained as a knee-jerk response to populism. Ministers are adrift on a turbulent sea
of tabloid ink.
The Conservatives, of course, cheer them on. After the calls to remove any checks on police
surveillance, the liberal credentials of the Tory front bench are in tatters. David Cameron also
recently called for everyone carrying a knife to be locked up. If this happened, the prison
population would quadruple and a Tory government would have to put a penny on the basic
rate of income tax to pay for this commitment alone.
This paper is a plea for a fundamental shift in our thinking about crime. It argues that we rely on
prison far too much. First, re-offending is appallingly high as prisons are colleges of crime.
Secondly, the chances of being caught are still far too low as only one in a hundred crimes leads
to a conviction. We do not need to increase the severity of punishments, but we do need to
increase the chances of being caught. Catching criminals works better than posturing about
penalties.
The focus is therefore on better policing. We need more police on the streets and detecting
crime. But we also need to improve the standard of the average police unit to that of the
professional best. How? We must stop ducking the tough choices on police reform, as both
Labour and Conservative governments have done.
We also need a radical programme of decentralisation, scrapping national targets and

empowering local people to hold their own police force to account. Police forces should be able
to experiment and innovate. Police authorities should have far more power to set priorities,
budgets and police taxes. They should also be able to dismiss the chief constable.
2 A paper by the Liberal Democrat Justice and Home Affairs Team

But police authorities must be representative of the whole community, including women and
ethnic minorities, which is why we reject Labour and Tory plans for elected sheriffs. We propose
a mixed system with a majority elected by fair votes.
Labour and the Conservatives have been locked in a populist battle over punishment for so long
that they cannot change. Labour has had its chance over the last eleven years, and it has
criminalised a generation of young people and nearly doubled the prison population. Labour
cannot deliver a fresh start in cutting crime. The Conservatives won’t. Only the Liberal Democrats
will.
Autumn Conference 2008 3

Executive Summary
• The public believe that crime is the most important issue facing the country today. Yet
criminal justice policy has become uniquely divorced from the evidence, as Labour and the
Tories compete on tough rhetoric rather than effective action. The public debate about
crime needs to focus on what works.
• Catching more criminals cuts crime, and posturing about punishments for the minority
who get caught does not. This is because only one in a hundred crimes results in a
conviction. There should be a spending shift towards policing and detection and away
from gaol for minor offences as prisons act as colleges of crime. Abolishing ID cards would
also fund more police and their staff.
• Better policing means more police on the streets. We are committed to an extra 10,000
police officers and neighbourhood policing across the country. It also means more efficient
policing that improves the average to the standard of the best. Detection rates even for
violence vary from 36 per cent to 67 per cent in different forces, yet both Labour and the
Tories have ducked the hard issues of reform. Serious and organised crime needs higher
priority.
• Central targets have been counterproductive, and it is time for a radical decentralisation
allowing priorities and budgets to be set locally. Where police forces have the same
boundaries as councils, the council should be the police authority holding the Chief
Constable to account. Where police forces straddle councils, a third of the police authority
should be nominated councillors and two thirds directly elected by fair votes.
• Faith should be restored to crime figures by putting them under the direct supervision of
the Office of National Statistics and publishing crime and detection figures at local (ward)
level. A National Crime Reduction Agency should be charged with assessing the reporting
on the effectiveness of police and criminal justice measures so that policy is guided by
evidence and not prejudice.
• Chief officers should have greater discretion to manage their force in deciding key staff
changes and rewarding specialisms. The police contract – lifetime employment for 30
years, a single point of entry and pay linked to seniority – should be urgently reviewed. The
Government should respect police pay awards from the independent Police Arbitration
Tribunal.
• Prisoners should have education and training as a route to work, and prisoners with drug
addiction and mental health problems should be treated medically if necessary in secure
accommodation. Minor offences and anti-social behaviour should be dealt with by
Community Justice Panels in every town, and the probation service should be
strengthened to enforce community sentences. We back restorative justice programmes
where offenders recognise the effects of their actions and make amends to their victims.
Specialist courts, notably drugs courts, should be expanded so that the offender’s progress
in rehabilitation can be followed and ensured.

Contents
Foreword Page 2
Executive Summary Page 4
Introduction: The Problem Page 6
Tory and Labour Tag on Crime Page 8
Liberal Democrat Proposals for Change Page 15

Introduction: The Problem

1.1. The British people believe crime to be the most important issue facing the country. Despite
the gathering signs of economic problems, some 42 per cent of those polled in the six
Ipsos-MORI polls so far in 2008 thought crime “the most important issue facing Britain
today”.1 The Government’s own review into public perceptions of crime found that 55 per
cent of the public thought crime was the most important issue facing Britain today.2
1.2. The importance attributed to crime has undergone a sea change over the last forty years.
From 1974 to 1992, there was only one year when more than 20 per cent of the public
thought crime the most important issue facing the country. From 1992 to 2005, there were
only two years when concern was less than 20 per cent. Since 2005, concern has taken off
sharply rising through 30 per cent to its present level of more than 40 per cent.
1.3. The increasing concern of the public contrasts oddly with the fall in crime shown by official
figures in recent years - whether for crime recorded by the police or by the British Crime
Survey (BCS). The most reliable and consistent series – as recognised by Tory and Labour
ministers when in office – is the BCS based on a sample of nearly 50,000 interviews. Unlike
the recorded crime figures, it is immune from changes in recording practice. It shows a
peak in 1995 followed by a consistent decline except for 2006-7. On the BCS, overall crime
is now back to the levels of the early eighties in Mrs Thatcher’s pomp.3 Within BCS crime,
violent crime has tracked the overall total downwards is now about half its peak in 1995.
1.4. Public perceptions, however, have changed dramatically, as we have seen from the polling
data. One factor in public perception is undoubtedly the change in the political climate.
Criminal justice policy had for many decades been marked by a substantial degree of
consensus among the political parties, but became a fiercely contested area when Tony
Blair took over as shadow Home secretary in 1992. It is a tribute to Mr Blair’s political skills
that the first sharp step up in public concern about crime dates from 1993.
1.5. The consequent political heat – reflected particularly in the popular press, with its
emphasis on human interest stories – has helped to increase the fear of crime. Some 44 per
cent of national tabloid newspaper readers perceive “a lot more crime over the previous
two years” compared with just 24 per cent of national broadsheet readers4.
1.6. Public concern has also been heightened by knife crime. We cannot be certain about
exactly what is happening, as the recorded crime figures do not yet report knife crimes
separately, and survey evidence in London is only partial. But in order to assess recent
trends more objectively, the Liberal Democrats asked the NHS about admissions to
hospitals from stab wounds. These show that admissions had risen by 88 per cent over five
years among under 16s, by 75 per cent among 16-18 year olds, and by 34 per cent overall
1
http://www.ipsos-mori.com/content/turnout/the-most-important-issues-facing-britain-today.ashx
2
Page 7, Engaging communities in fighting crime.
3
Figure 2.4, page 28, Home Office Statistical Bulletin, July 2008.
4
Table 5.09, page 142, BCS data. Home Office Statistical Bulletin, July 2008. The difference in perception between
social groups does not account for the difference in newspaper readership.

to almost 6,000 a year.5 The public is right to be worried about this development
particularly as it is concentrated geographically in troubled areas.
1.7 The figures for police recorded can be affected by changes in police recording practices,
targets and public tolerance. They are therefore widely regarded as less reliable than BCS
figures, which show a fall in violence. However, the police recorded figures for the most
serious violence show an increase from 15,820 to 16,939 cases per year over the period of
Labour's period of office. These cases of serious violence are less likely to have been
affected by changes in police recording practices or public tolerance.
1.8. There is nothing liberal about violence. Violent crime is unacceptable, and the public
demand for safety and security is entirely legitimate. As society has become more affluent,
new generations will not put up with inconveniences and disruptions that our forebears
thought normal. The policing and criminal justice system has always faced a trap of rising
public expectations familiar to other public services. It can only spring itself from that trap
if it manages to outperform expectations by providing a service fit for the twenty first
century.
1.9 This paper looks first at the dead end into which Labour and Tory policies have led us, and
then about how we can gradually re-establish a criminal justice and penal policy based on
evidence and professionalism rather than hunch and prejudice. The focus is on what works
and what does not, and what the policing and criminal justice system needs to do if it is to
reform to meet new challenges and higher expectations.
5
Hansard, 25/06/08: Column 362W.

Labour and Tory Tag on Crime

2.1 The principal charge against both successive Conservative and Labour Home secretaries is
that they have ignored what works to cut crime, and have instead played to the gallery
about measures about which there is much more doubt. In no other area of public life is
the gap between policy and evidence so wide.
2.2 Labour and the Conservatives have both succumbed to five key failures:
• They have pretended that prison and sentence severity is what deters crime, when
the evidence shows that what really matters is detecting the crime in the first place.
Catching criminals matters more than posturing on punishments.
• They have wasted taxpayers’ money on prisons, when the priority should be policing,
probation and secure treatment facilities for addicts and the mentally ill.
• They have succumbed to legislative diarrhoea as a substitute for action, with the
Labour government alone creating a giddying 3,600 new criminal offences since
1997. Criminal justice bills are used to “send signals” like press releases.
• They have set centralised targets for policing that have proved counter-productive in
distorting local priorities, undermining the professional discretion of police officers,
and sucking thousands unnecessarily into the criminal justice system.
• They have ducked the tough choices on police reform so that skills are not rewarded
enough, poor performance is not tackled, and pay has become a political football.
2.3 The latest example of knee-jerk nonsense was the Home Secretary’s announcement ahead
of her policing green paper that she intended to march offenders into hospitals to see the
consequences of violence, even though nobody had considered that patients and doctors
might resent offender tourism. Moreover, a similar juvenile awareness programme called
“Scared Straight” had been tried, tested, and found to put crime up not down in the United
States.6 When we pointed this out, the green paper was amended late to ditch the idea.
2.4 At the same time, the Conservatives suggested that the maximum four year sentence for
carrying a knife, at the discretion of a judge who could assess the motives and dangers
involved, was not enough. There should be presumption that everyone carrying a knife
should serve time in prison, a pledge that duly made tabloid headlines, but would, if
implemented, quadruple the prison population and add a penny to the basic rate of
income tax.7
6
Anthony Petrosino et al, “Scared Straight and other juvenile awareness programmes for preventing juvenile
delinquency: a systematic review of the randomised experimental evidence”, Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, September 2003, p. 41-62.
7
Liberal Democrat research shows locking up every knife carrier (330,000 young people) would cost £4.9 billion a
year. This is based on the £40,992 annual price of keeping a prisoner behind bars and the capital cost of building

2.5 The sad truth is that both Labour and the Conservatives are far more interested in
posturing in the press about punishment than about taking the measures that are proven
to tackle crime. Their approach has meant that crime has been higher than it would have
been had they done the right thing and stuck to what really works. That is why Labour and
the Tories are soft on crime and soft on the causes of crime. They care more about their
own short-term popularity than getting crime down.
2.6 Both Labour and the Conservatives are committed to longer prison sentences: the average
crown court custodial sentence has gone from 22.4 to 25.2 months since 1997 at
considerable expense to the taxpayer. Yet the Home Office’s own research on sentence
severity – a substantial study by leading international criminologists - has concluded there
is “no firm evidence regarding the extent to which raising severities of punishment would
enhance deterrence of crime”.8
2.7 Both Labour and the Conservatives want yet more prisons, even though we lock up more
people per head of population than any other country in the European Union except
Luxembourg. Labour’s proposed Titan prisons are particularly ineffective because
prisoners will be far from families and relationships that might allow some chance of
rehabilitation and living in such large institutions can have a brutalising effect on their
inmates.
2.8 The international evidence also undermines the view that prison works. England and Wales
had an 11 per cent drop in crime between 1991 and 2001 but a 45 per cent increase in the
prison rate: from this simple contrast, some argue that prison works. But in the same
period Canada experienced a 17 per cent drop and increased the incarceration rate by just
2 per cent. Denmark had a 9 per cent reduction in the crime rate, which was matched by a
9 per cent reduction in the prison rate.9 If prison works so well, why have we needed to
raise the prison population from 44,552 in 1993 to 83,575 in July 2008? The most
comprehensive recent study of the international evidence concluded: “These figures, once
again, support the general criminological conclusion that crime and incarceration rates are
fairly independent of one another; each rises and falls according to its own laws and
dynamics.” 10
2.9 Prison is necessary for serious offences and serial offenders, but its main focus must be to
prevent crime not to leave its inmates with so little to do or learn that they swap hints on
best criminal practice. As the former Tory Home Secretary David Waddington once put it in
a criminal justice white paper, prison is “an expensive way of making bad people worse”.
The current re-offending rate for a young man serving a first custodial sentence is 92 per
100,000 additional prison places.

http://www.chrishuhne.org.uk/news/000480/tory_knife_plans_would_add_penny_on_income_tax.html
8
Von Hirsch, A et al, Criminal Deterrence and Sentence Severity, page 46, Oxford, Hart Publishing 1999.
9
The Howard League for Penal Reform, The Principles and Limits of the Penal System, p. 13,
http://www.howardleague.org/fileadmin/howard_league/user/pdf/Commission/HL_Commission_Seminar_1_Repo
rt.pdf
10
Tapio Lappi-Seppala, Trust, Welfare and Political Economy, National Research Institute of Legal Policy, Finland, 2007
(mimeo).

cent.11 Short-term prison sentences disrupt work and family commitments, and train
people very effectively for a life of worse crime when they get out.
2.10 The reason why sentence severity and prison has so little impact on crime is partly the
shocking rates of re-offending, which must be addressed by providing meaningful
education, training and work for prisoners so that they are better equipped for an honest
life outside. But there is another reason why sentence severity is so weak an instrument:
only about one in 100 crimes in this country leads to a conviction in court12. What works to
cut crime is detection: catching criminals is more effective than posturing on punishment.
2.11 Yet detection rates have fallen back sharply from 34 per cent at the end of the eighties to
28 per cent on the latest figures. Just as tellingly, detection rates vary substantially from
police force to force. This can, of course, reflect different recording practices and also
efforts to take other crimes into consideration after conviction. But even for crimes such as
violence against the person, which the public and police might expect to prioritise, there is
an astonishing difference in detection rates from the worst force (London’s Metropolitan
police with 36 per cent) against the best (North Yorkshire with 67 per cent). Even big urban
forces similar to the Met – such as Merseyside and Greater Manchester – have detection
rates for violence of 54 per cent and 50 per cent respectively.
2.12 Narrowing the differences in detection by learning from best practice and what works
should be an overwhelming priority for all police forces. There would be more than
140,000 extra violent crimes detected each year if the national average detection rate were
improved to the rate of the top 10 per cent of police forces. There would be nearly 400,000
more crimes detected if the average detection rate was closer to the top 10 per cent,
including over 40,000 burglaries, 17,000 robberies and 7,000 sexual offences. This kind of
improvement in detection rates would have a greater impact on reducing crime than any
other single factor.13 Penalties are usually severe: the problem is that the chances of facing
them are too low.
2.13 A sensible police and penal policy would give top priority to policing, detection, and
community punishments, saving money on prisons. If the prison population had been held
at the same level as it was when crime peaked in 1996, there would now be additional £1.2
billion available in public spending from the prison running costs alone, enough to hire an
additional 25,000 police officers across the country, an increase of nearly a fifth. If the ID
card scheme were scrapped, a further 10,000 police could be retained.
2.14 The Matrix knowledge group recently found that seven alternatives to prison offered
better value for money for the taxpayer when reduced re-offending is the desired
outcome. The value for money savings per offender were significant, ranging from £425 to
£88,469 when considering only the public sector costs, and between £16,260 and £202,775
when also including costs to the victims.14 These included three adult community-based
11
Reducing re-offending by ex-prisoners, p. 16, http://www.thelearningjourney.co.uk/file.2007-10-
01.1714894439/download
12
This takes into account crimes not covered by the British Crime Survey against business and those under the age
of 16. The BCS crime detection rate is about 3 per cent.
13
Liberal Democrat research, available on request.
14
The Matrix Knowledge Group, The Economic Case For and Against Prison, November 2007,
http://www.matrixknowledge.co.uk/prison-economics/

interventions – residential drug treatment, surveillance and surveillance with drug

treatment – and two alternative juvenile interventions – community programmes with
aftercare and surveillance and community supervision with victim reparation. If prison was
the only possible sentence, then behavioural intervention, educational or vocational
intervention, sex-offender treatment and drug treatment all had a positive impact for both
the offender and the taxpayer.15
2.15 The same bizarre sense of priorities – favouring prison over what works in policing and
other strategies - animated Tory policy in Government. Violent crime rose every year
between 1979 and 1997 by a total of 168 per cent. In the same period, total recorded crime
rose by 81 per cent. Burglary doubled. The chance of being a victim of crime doubled.
Convictions fell by a third.16 Surprisingly, police numbers fell by 1,132 between 1993 and
1997 admittedly in part due to local decisions giving priority to equipment.17 Nevertheless,
this was despite John Major’s promise of 5,000 more police officers.18 As recently as in their
2005 manifesto, the Conservatives proposed 5,000 new police officers a year.19 David
Cameron quietly dropped this proposal when he became leader preferring quixotic
commitments to jail all knife-carriers.
2.16 Punishment posturing has led to ludicrous legislative results. There have been 65 acts in
this area since 1997. Another six bills are being prepared for next year. In their first decade
in government, Labour added 370 Acts and 33,000 Statutory Instruments to the statute
book, a total of 114,000 pages. This legislation takes the same amount of shelf space as 200
copies of War and Peace and is twice as heavy as John Prescott.
2.17 Labour has introduced 3,600 new criminal offences since 1997 . It is, for example, now
against the law to sell a grey squirrel or impersonate a traffic warden and in 2004 it became
illegal to import into Britain ‘potatoes which he knows to be or has reasonable cause to
suspect to be Polish.’20 This legislative diarrhoea is the despair of judges, who see whole
sections of criminal justice bills shovelled through the Commons without debate. Just as
important, it takes police time and effort to keep up with the constant whirl of new
offences.
2.18 The automatic response of Labour and Tory ministers to failure and public pressure has
been to gather more power to Whitehall, weakening links between police and local
communities, and at the same time depriving police forces of their ability to experiment
and innovate. Decentralisation is the only way, in public services, that there can be a
process of discovery akin to entrepreneurship in the private sector, and the only way in
which best practice can be developed and then spread. Imposing one model from
Whitehall merely risks spreading failure. Yet centralisation has been the order of the day
for both Labour and the Tories.
2.19 Between 1968 and 1974, Labour and Conservative governments undertook police force
amalgamations that reduced their number from 126 to 43. Later, the Major administration
15
Ibid., p.15.
16
Hansard, 17 Jun 2008: Column 880.
17
Police Service Strength 2003, p.14, http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/hosb1103.pdf
18
Conservative Party Conference speech, 1995.
19
Conservative Party Manifesto 2005, p.15, http://www.conservatives.com/pdf/manifesto-uk-2005.pdf
20
SI 2004/1452 Polish Potatoes

would reduce the size of police authorities and transfer direct management functions and
control over budgets away from them to Chief Constables in the 1994 and 1996 Police
Acts. The result was toothless police authorities and forces severely lacking in local
accountability.
2.20 Labour has continued this process since 1997. They have expanded the reach of the Home
Office in setting targets, prescribing strategies, inspecting performance and requiring the
implementation of detailed action plans.21 In the Police Reform Act 2002, the Home
Secretary tied police forces hands by producing a National Policing Plan. The Home
Secretary had new powers to intervene in the management of police forces, upsetting the
balance between the traditional tripartite structure of government, police authorities and
chief constables. The Police and Justice Act 2006 further eroded the autonomy of police
authorities and allowed direct government intervention in police business.22
2.21 The Home Secretary retains a number of powers, such as removing chief officers, giving
directions to forces and the power to force mergers, which the recent Green Paper makes
clear the Government is still prepared to use.23
2.22 The Police Federation believe that the ‘target-driven culture’ imposed by the Government
is forcing them to make arrests for petty offences, at the expense of concentrating on
serious crime.24 The idea of ‘offences brought to justice’ bizarrely gives equal weighting to
all offences. Clearing up a murder, therefore, is of the same ‘tick-box’ value as cautioning a
man for ‘possession of an egg with intent to throw’ or for ‘throwing a glass of water over
his girlfriend.’25 The result has been that incidents, such as playground disputes, which
once would have been dealt with by common sense and a ticking-off, now appear in the
crime statistics.
2.23 As one police officer put it, in an interview with a think tank, ‘we are bringing more and
more people to justice but they are the wrong people.’26 The easiest way to get sanction
detections is to penalise children. This Government has criminalised children in an
unprecedented manner. Between 2003 and 2006, the number of young people aged
between 10 and 17 who received a reprimand, final warning or conviction for an indictable
offence increased by 19 per cent.27 We have more children in prison than any other country
in western Europe, and we have the lowest age of criminal responsibility in both Scotland
and England and Wales28. Our detailed proposals for tackling youth offending – for
preventing offences in the first place, and for heading off minor offenders before they get
21
Loveday, B. and Reid, A., Going Local: Who should run Britain’s police?, Policy Exchange, 2003,
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/libimages/180.pdf
22
Daily Telegraph, Abandoned police force merger plans cost £11m, 21/08/06,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1526849/Abandoned-police-force-merger-plans-cost-andpound11m.html
23
Home Office, From the Neighbourhood to the National: Policing Our Communities, p.84,
http://files.homeoffice.gov.uk/police/policing_green_paper.pdf
24
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6656411.stm
25
Ibid.
26
The Public and the Police, Civitas, p. 48, http://www.civitas.org.uk/press/prcs74.php
27
Nacro, Some facts about children and young people who offend – 2006, March 2008, p.2,
http://www.nacro.org.uk/data/resources/nacro-2008050105.pdf
28
Aged 8 in Scotland, and aged 10 in England and Wales.

worse – were set out in July in our paper “A Life away from crime – a new approach to
youth justice”29.
2.24 Jan Berry, the former head of the Police Federation, has said that these Government
targets are causing a breakdown in public trust in the police.30 Today, only just over half of
the public (53 per cent) think that the police are doing an excellent or good job.31 This may
have increased from a low point of 47 per cent in 2003/04 but it remains a long way behind
the 1996 level of 64 per cent.32 Perhaps more worryingly, only 41 per cent of those who
had had recent contact with the police thought they were doing a good or excellent job,
compared to 57 per cent who had not.33 Worse still, only 48 per cent of all people surveyed
thought the police would be there when needed and 43 per cent thought they could be
relied on to deal with minor crimes.34
2.25 Apart from corroding trust, chasing sanction detections for minor offences diverts police
effort from crime that the public cares about most.
2.26 Despite all the management-speak of centralised target setting and control, both Labour
and the Conservatives have ducked many of the serious issues of police reform. Everyone
is in favour of the easy commitments – cutting paperwork, introducing more IT – but
neither Labour nor the Tories address the rigidities of police working. There must be a
review of the many aspects of police officer employment practices which limit the service’s
attractiveness to many potential high calibre candidates. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of
Constabulary (HMIC) was surely right to advocate a ‘fundamental review of concepts such
as the single point of entry to the service, the 30-year police career and the current non-
transferability of training, skills and qualifications.’35
2.27 In the four years since that report came out, however, Labour have been unwilling or
unable to tackle these fundamental issues any more than the Tories. The Tories’ interim
paper Policing for the People admits that one of the greatest problems with police pay is
that it is bound to seniority and suggests that officers should be able to progress within
ranks, not just between them.36 Yet when faced with precisely these recommendations in
1993 by the Sheehy Report, the Conservative Government ducked real reform.37 Similarly,
the Conservatives now recognise that ‘police injury pensions were regarded as particularly
wasteful and expensive.’38 However, in the mid-1990s they again ducked the issue and
refused to implement the reforms recommended by the Sheehy Report on pension
reform.39 The 1993 report recommended radical changes to police tenure and pensions.
Yet despite promising that a full review into police pensions would report in mid-1994, the
29
http://www.libdems.org.uk/media/documents/policies/A%20Life%20Away%20From%20Crime.pdf
30
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7145860.stm
31
Crime in England and Wales 2007/8, p.117, http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs08/hosb0708.pdf
32
Op Cit, A New Beat, p.9.
33
Crime in England and Wales 2007/8, p.119, http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs08/hosb0708.pdf
34
Ibid.
35
Ibid., p.18.
36
Conservative Interim Paper Policing for the People, pp.110-116,
http://www.conservatives.com/pdf/policereform.pdf
37
Home Office response to Sheehy Report, p. 3, response 11 and 13. (28 Oct 1993) HDEP93/175
38
Op Cit, Policing for the People, p. 123
39
Sheehy Report (Oct 1993), Chp. 13 and Home Office Response, p.2.

then Conservative Government refused to take on these difficult issues and the review
remained unpublished until 1998.40
2.28 The Home Office’s response to the Sheehy Report also pledged to introduce new
arrangements ‘for dealing with misconduct and unsatisfactory performance will ensure
that officers who ought not to remain in the service will leave it.’41 Unsurprisingly, the
Conservative Government ducked this issue as well. Pay continues to be overwhelmingly
determined by seniority in a way that would be regarded as antediluvian in other walks of
life, as it merely encourages a demotivating time-serving culture. Poor performance is
more difficult to tackle than other parts of the public sector let alone the private sector.
2.29 Both Labour and the Conservatives have now recognised the limits of centralised targets,
and seek to ensure local accountability through directly elected officials. In the
Conservative plans, there would be one elected Commissioner or sheriff for the whole
force area, but this would allow someone to be elected on a modest vote who could
proceed to ignore the interests of minorities. Indeed, they could also ignore the interests of
the majority if they were elected on a plurality of the vote. Labour plans are scarcely better,
as they would elect one person for each council that is part of a Crime and Disorder
Reduction Partnership. As a first past the post election, this too is likely to sideline women
and ethnic minorities from representation on the police authority. Both sets of proposals
would risk a further politicisation of policing.
40
Ibid., p.5.
41
Ibid., p.2.

Liberal Democrat Proposals for Change

3.1 The Liberal Democrat approach to policing and criminal justice above all seeks a shift away
from populist punitiveness, and towards what works to cut crime: more police, higher
detection rates, greater local accountability, ways of dealing with low level offences before
the formal criminal justice system is involved, and an emphasis on preventative measures
taken in conjunction with local councils (such as alley gates, measures to enforce licensing
restrictions and so on). When prison is necessary, its focus must be on work, education and
training for prisoners, and on providing help back into meaningful jobs on leaving.
3.2 Reducing crime should be the overwhelming priority of the police and criminal justice
system, and proposals should be tested objectively to ensure that the most effective
measures are being taken with that one objective in mind. The National Police
Improvement Agency should be given a wider remit and more resources to test
scientifically what works: the new National Crime Reduction Agency should aim to do
for policing and criminal justice what the National Institute for Clinical Excellence
does in the health service. In policing, its research should gradually build up a core of
professional expertise around policing techniques that are proven to be effective. It should
also have a key role in publishing comparative performance indicators, and reporting on
and encouraging best practice.
3.3 The current distrust and confusion concerning the crime statistics needs to be addressed.
The public regards the politically-sensitive crime statistics rather as they used to see the
unemployment figures under the Conservatives, an expensively rigged joke. The Home
Office statistical unit should no longer merely be under the umbrella of UK National
Statistics, but should be a part of the Office of National Statistics itself. The closeness
of the relationship between statisticians and the policy-makers they serve can be fruitful in
ensuring relevance, but it can also lead to doubts about conflicts of interest. Where the
ONS feels that crime figures are inevitably compromised – because of police decisions
leading to under-recording, or the public’s unwillingness to report – those series should be
highlighted as unreliable. Crime figures should be published at ward level, but these
should also include detection rates so that local police can be held to account.
3.4 There should be a sustained shift of spending priorities from the prison service to the
police and probation, so that non-custodial sentences can be properly enforced. We
would put at least 10,000 more police on the streets by scrapping the Government’s
intrusive and ineffective ID card scheme. If the prison population had been maintained at
the same level as 1996, there would be £1.2 billion extra in running costs available to
spend elsewhere in the home and justice budget. This is enough to hire 25,000 police
officers.
3.5 Centralised targets must end, but the corollary is that local accountability must be
strengthened firmly. Police authorities should have far more power. They must have
the sole right to sack and appoint the Chief Constable, a right currently circumscribed by
the approval of the Home Secretary. They should set local policing priorities, agree any
national minimum standards (for example for response times), determine budgets, and
change that part of taxation allocated to them (currently council tax, but a part of local

income tax under our proposals). They should not be subject to Whitehall capping, but
should be held to account in the normal democratic way by the voters.
3.6 Where a police force has the same borders as a local council, as is still the case with
eight of the 43 English and Welsh forces at present, that council should be the police
authority. Councils can then dovetail their own anti-crime efforts with the police and
criminal justice system, and take a view of local priorities not just within policing but more
widely. The council will have a clear mandate across its field of responsibility, allowing it
not merely to raise or lower tax and spending on policing but also to shift resources from
one area to another. There is a direct line of accountability to the electorate who can
therefore have the last say in rewarding or punishing the decisions of their elected
representatives.
3.7 Force mergers, however, now mean that most police forces straddle a large number of
local authorities, so that different arrangements need to be made in these cases as there is
no appetite for breaking up existing forces. The same considerations apply to a very large
force area like London. The present system of indirect nomination of elected councillors –
the compromise as forces have become larger than councils - is in theory proportional, but
in practice smaller groups and minorities are squeezed out. Although the Liberal
Democrats have averaged 27 per cent of the vote in the last five years while the number of
Lib Dem councillors on the police authorities is disproportionately small at 19 per cent. The
distortions can be much greater in individual force areas, where Labour representation is
systematically squeezed in the South and Tory representation in the North42.
3.8 Our proposed new powers for police authorities mean that the public should know and be
able to hold to account their police authority representatives: there should be no taxation
without representation. Unlike voters can hold decision-takers directly to account, there
will be overwhelming pressure on central government to interfere. Police authorities need
to be strong enough, with a popular mandate, to resist Home Office meddling. We
therefore propose that two-thirds of the elected members of the police authority
should be directly elected by fair votes. Direct election by the Single Transferable Vote
would properly represent all the strands of opinion, minorities and the quirks of geography
in a police authority. There should be no bar on a dual mandate allowing people to stand
for council and the police authority. This one-third/two-thirds system is the same as Liberal
Democrat policy for elected health boards.
3.9 Given the importance of councils and police working together in crime and disorder
reduction partnerships, police command units should be aligned with such council
boundaries to encourage dialogue and co-operation between the commander and
the council, as is already the case in London. No-one should underestimate the impact
that an enlightened council can have in preventing crime. Lib Dem-run Liverpool managed
to cut domestic burglary by a quarter in two years, and reduce robbery by 18 per cent,
thanks in part to its alley-gate scheme. Southwark's multi-agency approach to street
drinking cut the numbers from 140 to 26 in one month in Camberwell over a period of a
year. Lib Dem Lambeth put enormous efforts into closing the borough's 84 crack-houses,
reducing them to just ten open at any one time. Bristol opened the first Family Support
42
A council has to nominate three members to a delegated body before the Opposition need be represented.

Centre in the UK where families that agree to learn about parenting skills and other ways
to change their lives have legal action suspended while they do so. The lead councillor for
community safety and the chair of the CDRP should have the right to attend and speak at
meetings of their police authority. A third of the elected members of the police
authority should be nominated from councillors within the force area. Police
authorities should also co-opt extra members such as magistrates and others to
ensure diversity, experience and expertise. As now, key votes should require a majority
of elected members.
3.10 Police authorities need to take a proactive role in challenging their local force to meet their
priorities. There is also strong evidence of big differences in force efficiency: a recent study
from Loughborough University economists, for example, gave police force efficiency
scores that ranged from 100 per cent for Suffolk, North Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Cumbria
to 73 per cent for the Metropolitan Police and 78 per cent for Surrey.43 Given that the
criminological evidence is so strong that detection deters crime, the variation in detection
rates from one force to another is surprisingly large. But the numbers, of course, are only
ever part of the story. In rural areas where everyone knows everyone else, it may be easier
to detect crime than in urban streets where neighbours are strangers (though in other
respects rural areas more difficult to police). So police authorities should have the
resources to research the performance of their police force, and to allow for the full
range of factors determining performance.
3.11 The Government intends that data about crime at ward level should be published. But it is
essential for local accountability that not just crime data but also detection data
should be published at ward level, allowing residents to assess police performance. In
New York, one of the key factors in improving police performance under the reforms of
Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Commissioner Bill Bratton was the regular comparison of
successful precincts with less successful ones, and the spreading of best practice. The
NYPD Compstat system also publishes data within a week of collection, enabling swift
responses to operational shortfalls and changes in criminal activity.
3.12 We support the new emphasis on neighbourhood policing. After many years when
only the Liberal Democrats championed this idea, the pilots have been successful in
cutting crime and reassuring the public.44 Neighbourhood policing is now being rolled out
nationally. It provides an essential link between police forces and the communities they
serve, gathering intelligence about crime and also reassuring witnesses that they can and
should come forward. Policing relies on the active cooperation of the citizen, and
neighbourhood policing is a key part of maintaining the public’s commitment to law and
order.
3.13 If the Chief Constable and other chief officers are to be held closely accountable by
reinvigorated police authorities, they in turn must be able to manage their forces, decide
on key staff changes, and reward key specialisms, subject of course to the key checks and
43
Drake, L. and Simper, R., Police Efficiency in Offences Cleared, p.23
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ec/Research/Discussion per cent20Papers per cent202002/Research per
cent20Papers per cent202002/Police per cent20Efficiency per cent20in per cent20Offences per cent20Cleared.pdf
44
Victimisation rates fell from 42% to 32% in the pilot areas, compared with a fall from 38% to 32% in those without
neighbourhood policing activity, according to the House of Commons standard library note SN/HA/4122. See the
evaluation also in http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs08/rdsolr0108.pdf

balances of employment law. There should be an urgent review of whether the very
restrictive terms and conditions for police officers – a single point of entry into the
force, 30-year lifetime employment and pay determined by seniority – are still
appropriate. Pay must reward an officer’s investment in expertise – whether in
information technology or forensics – without promoting them out of the job for which
they are well prepared. Working closely with the staff associations, it ought to be possible
to modernise the police contract to make the working life of the vast majority of dedicated
and hard-working police officers more satisfying and rewarding.
3.14 There should be more routes out of the police force when officers are no longer motivated
or even physically fit. A job for life, regardless of aptitude or effort, is no longer acceptable.
For example, police officers are physically tested when they join the force, and are tested
again each year for the use of equipment like batons and handcuffs. But in such a
physically demanding job, it is odd that there are no regular tests for fitness as one chief
constable pointed out last year in introducing compulsory fitness testing.45 Fit and active
front-line officers should receive pay in line with the dangers they face, and the arrest
powers they exercise. There should be annual fitness tests, and those who fail should
be moved to a desk role or civilian position in the force.
3.15 The Government’s handling of overall police pay has been abysmal. Given that the police
are not by law allowed to strike, and there are also controls on their ability to take second
jobs in their spare time, the Government owes a particular responsibility to the police to
respect agreed methods of pay determination. Ministers should respect and implement
in full the recommendations of the independent Police Arbitration Tribunal. The
Home Secretary’s failure to do so has been a substantial blow to morale.
3.16 There should be a renewed effort to cut unnecessary police paper-work, and to replace
form-filling with voice-recognition technology, hand-held computers, and civilian
keyboard operators who could take details over the radio. However, some data are
required to stop abuses such as disproportionate stop and search of members of ethnic
minorities. Police powers must be used responsibly and in proportion to the problem. The
Law Commission should be asked to advise on how legal checks and balances could
be made simpler, and the Plain English Campaign should be asked to advise on
simplifying police forms.
3.17 As well as local communities asking ‘what are the police doing for us’, we should also ask
‘what can we do for ourselves?’ Community engagement means encouraging people to
work alongside the police, notably in the unique role of the Special Constable. The Home
Office calls them ‘part of a tradition of the public taking an active part in policing their own
community’ but in recent years their numbers have plummeted.46 In 1993 there were
20,573 special constables in England and Wales.47 Today there are just 13,221.48 We would
45
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_east/6973970.stm
46
‘Police: Serving the Community’, Home Office Booklet, http://police.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/community-
policing/police_serving_community.pdf?view=Binary
47
Hansard, 22/07/02, Column 854W,
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmhansrd/vo020722/text/20722w45.htm#20722w45.html_w
qn6
48
Hansard, 07/01/08, Column 298W,
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080107/text/80107w0060.htm

back a new recruitment drive for special constables particularly among women and
people from ethnic minorities.
3.18 Turning now to the prison system, the key priority must be to ensure the reform and
rehabilitation of the offender. There is therefore a clear measure of success: does the
offender commit crime again? The first priority must be to treat the mentally ill and drug
addicts as patients rather than prisoners. Neither will respond rationally to punishment,
and both need care if they are to stop re-offending. Yet 72 per cent of male prisoners and
70 per cent of female prisoners suffer from two or more mental health disorders.49 And 55
per cent of offenders entering prison have serious drug problems.50 Offenders who are
mentally ill or drug addicts should be separated out of the mainstream prison
population by extending mental health and drug treatment for offenders.
3.19 Rehabilitation among other prisoners would improve by giving them something
productive to do. Prisoners who do not participate in education or training are three times
more likely to go back to crime. This makes it even more shocking that 65 per cent of
offenders do not receive any training. Half of all prisoners do not have the skills required by
96 per cent of jobs, and only one in five are able to complete a job application form.51 We
would triple the number of prisoners working, and make education and training
compulsory. We would ensure that access to basic literacy and numeracy courses is
available to all and targeted at young offenders. The effort a prisoner puts into the
education and work will be one of the factors used when considering their release date.
There can be routes back into useful social roles, but we are simply failing to provide
enough of them.
3.20 The courts system has a key role to play in promoting rehabilitation. When dealing with
addicts, a specialist drugs court is most likely to be able to insist on rehabilitation. They
also allow judges to follow through with an alternative if a first course of action fails, so
that judgement becomes a process of reform and rehabilitation. We should expand
specialist courts that develop a real knowledge of drug or domestic violence cases.
Community courts, such as the pilot in Liverpool, are also an interesting innovation. By
bringing police, probation and social services together in one court building, it is possible
to follow through an offender’s rehabilitation. Community Courts should be properly
evaluated and rolled out across the country if, as we expect, their promise is borne out by
the evidence.
3.21 An alternative to imprisonment is community punishment. David Hanson, the Justice

Minister, said recently that ‘the truth is that for many offenders community sentences are
more effective in cutting re-offending than short-term prison sentences.’52 But community
sentences need to be demanding and rehabilitative. A properly resourced and stable
probation service is the key to effective community sentences.
49
Prison Reform Trust, Bromley Briefings, June 2008, p. 29
http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/temp/FactfilespPROOFspJUNE08small.pdf
50
Ibid., p.31
51
Prison Reform Trust, Prison Factfile, p.33, http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/temp/factfilenov2006finalsp4.pdf
52
David Hanson, MoJ Press Release, 03.06.08, http://www.justice.gov.uk/news/newsrelease030608a.htm

3.22 To stop young people from being sucked into the criminal justice system for low level
offences and anti-social behaviour, we would set up Community Justice Panels (CJPs)
in every town and city. Pioneered in Chard, Somerset, offenders apologise before a panel
of local people. A course of reparation, including Positive Behaviour Orders (PBOs), is then
agreed that allows the offender to make amends to the community, with a punishment
agreed by local people that is tailored to fit the crime. Action is taken in the courts against
those who refuse the punishment. The re-offending rate in Chard is just 5 per cent.53
3.23 Another innovation is restorative justice. Victims confront the offender with the full
consequences of their actions, which can lead to heart-felt changes in behaviour in the
offender and a relief of grievance for the victim.54 A growing body of evidence suggests
that restorative justice cuts re-offending, including a recent Government report.55 In a
Canadian study, offenders who were dealt with using restorative justice had a much lower
reconviction rate - just 11 per cent compared with 37 per cent of those who went to
prison.56 We would ensure that restorative justice projects are run locally in every
community with facilities in schools and children’s care homes. We will also back
larger pilots of restorative justice programmes in the criminal justice system.
53
http://www.realjustice.org/library/cicjp.html
54
Restorative justice: the views of victims and offenders, June 2007,
http://www.justice.gov.uk/docs/Restorative-Justice.pdf
55
Does restorative justice affect reconviction?, June 2008,
http://www.justice.gov.uk/docs/restorative-justice-report_06-08.pdf
56
Institute for Public Policy Reseacrh, Communities can hold youth to account and reduce re-offending,
http://www.ippr.org.uk/pressreleases/?id=3180

Applicability and Costings

With the devolution of powers to Scotland and Wales, many decisions made in Westminster now
apply to England only. That means that policies in those nations are increasingly different from those
in England – reflecting different choices, priorities and circumstances. The proposals set out in this
document are our vision for what a Liberal Democrat government in Westminster could do to cut
crime.
Some proposals published by the Liberal Democrats imply modifications to existing government
public expenditure priorities. We recognise that it may not be possible to achieve all these proposals
in the lifetime of one Parliament. We intend to publish a costed manifesto, setting out our priorities
across all policy areas, at the next general election.

Cutting Crime by Catching Criminals

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Cutting Crime by Catching Criminals

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Cutting Crime:

Catching Criminals With Better Policing

We also need a radical programme of decentralisation, scrapping national targets and

2 A paper by the Liberal Democrat Justice and Home Affairs Team

Autumn Conference 2008 3

4 A paper by the Liberal Democrat Justice and Home Affairs Team

Executive Summary Page 4

Introduction: The Problem Page 6

Tory and Labour Tag on Crime Page 8

Liberal Democrat Proposals for Change Page 15

Autumn Conference 2008 5

Introduction: The Problem

6 A paper by the Liberal Democrat Justice and Home Affairs Team

Autumn Conference 2008 7

Labour and Tory Tag on Crime

8 A paper by the Liberal Democrat Justice and Home Affairs Team

100,000 additional prison places.

Autumn Conference 2008 9

10 A paper by the Liberal Democrat Justice and Home Affairs Team

interventions – residential drug treatment, surveillance and surveillance with drug

Autumn Conference 2008 11

12 A paper by the Liberal Democrat Justice and Home Affairs Team

Autumn Conference 2008 13

14 A paper by the Liberal Democrat Justice and Home Affairs Team

Liberal Democrat Proposals for Change

Autumn Conference 2008 15

16 A paper by the Liberal Democrat Justice and Home Affairs Team

Autumn Conference 2008 17

18 A paper by the Liberal Democrat Justice and Home Affairs Team

3.21 An alternative to imprisonment is community punishment. David Hanson, the Justice

Autumn Conference 2008 19

20 A paper by the Liberal Democrat Justice and Home Affairs Team

Applicability and Costings

Autumn Conference 2008 21

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