UK Election 2019: Implications for Criminal Justice

The Conservative landslide has caused grave concern in the British criminal justice community. Over the past 18 months Home Secretary Priti Patel has doubled down on the party’s “tough on crime” reputation, promising to make criminals “feel terror”. This accompanies proposals for tougher sentencing, greater police stop-and-search powers, and an end to early release. 

But do these proposed measures actually work? Hammering criminals is a tried and tested political strategy. It plays on public fears for safety, and depicts criminals as a dangerous “other”. But excessive punishments and over-criminalization very rarely improve public safety and marginalize our most vulnerable communities. The poor are pushed deeper into cycles of police contact, unemployment and incarceration. Minorities are often discriminated against - a fact Theresa May admitted when discussing stop-and-search. 

The situation is already dire. The prison population has doubled in England and Wales over the past 25 years. This has resulted in rampant overcrowding and undermined rehabilitation efforts including education, substance abuse treatment and offending behaviour programmes.

We must provide skills to help people find employment upon release. We must give appropriate treatment to people with mental health issues (over 50% of the prison population). We must listen to and and heal victims and their families. We must look for alternatives to incarceration - community sentences can be more effective than short spells behind bars.

The lesson from the USA is a painful one. Until recent years, being tough on crime seemed essential if you wanted to get elected to any public office in the United States. Subsequent policies such as mandatory minimum sentences and “3 Strikes” laws created an incarceration explosion that left 2.4 million people behind bars (more than anywhere else in the world). Public outrage has now forced policymakers to rethink this approach, but the UK must work to get off this path before it is too late. 

The ‘fire and brimstone’ approach is cruel, discriminatory and ineffective, and Ms Patel’s repeated support for capital punishment belies her understanding of what fair and equal justice looks like. She wants to “combat criminality”, but violence and fear dominate her plan to fight it. We must instead place rehabilitation, public safety and victim support at the heart of our justice system.