Good Morning Britain
More crime. More time?
The debate over longer sentences for repeat offenders.
Watch on YouTubeOURSOLUTIONS.
Our politicians chose to make our streets dangerous and to break our justice system. We cannot accept this any longer. Things must change.
The solutionsTHE SOLUTIONS
01Longer sentences for career criminals
Judges, courts and sentencing guidelines
- Change the law and sentencing guidelines so each further offence leads to a proportionately longer prison sentence, and sentences compound as a pattern of offending becomes more serious or widespread, reflecting the number and seriousness of previous offences, including different types of crime, and the harm caused by repeat offending. Persistent offending should favour prison over repeated community sentences, while preserving judges’ discretion. Remove guidance that keeps prison terms to a minimum or discounts serious previous offences because the latest offence is less serious.
Policing and investigations
- Train police to use binary search to review CCTV footage efficiently, repeatedly halving the time window to locate offences and identify suspects.
- Establish a police CCTV repository where members of the public can submit recordings from their cameras for use as evidence in investigations.
- Give police greater discretion to authorise investigations under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, including surveillance of career criminals and GPS tracking of stolen goods.
- Use Operation Cross as a template: identify crime hotspots, combine plain-clothes and high-visibility patrols, work with local communities, and use stop-and-search powers and lawful entry to premises holding stolen goods to catch career criminals.
- Prioritise theft investigations and increase their funding. Use sustained operations to catch persistent thieves and prevent further offending.
Swift justice for first-time offenders
- Give first-time offences high priority in court and deal with them quickly. Give police the power to bring first-time offenders to court at pace, and use prompt community sentences and fines for the least serious offences to deter further offending before it becomes a pattern.
Treatment and rehabilitation
- Treat offenders’ mental illness and addiction in appropriate institutions, using Mental Health Act powers where the legal criteria are met. These problems should not be used to avoid prison when a custodial sentence is justified.
Prison capacity
- Build prisons quickly to remove the capacity bottleneck and give courts the space to imprison career criminals for longer.
Outcome
Career criminals are taken off Britain’s streets. Our communities and streets become safer once more.
02End the Backlog
Court opening hours and capacity
- Require every Crown Court to sit Monday to Friday, with enough judges, lawyers and staff to turn available courtrooms into hearings and clear the backlog.
- Once every Crown Court sits Monday to Friday, extend Crown Court hours and open at weekends through an Additional Crown Courts and Capacity Programme. Amend section 30 of the Courts Act so the Lord Chancellor, after consulting the Lord Chief Justice, can direct when and where Crown Courts and magistrates’ courts sit.
- Immediately launch an Additional Courts and Capacity Programme to open extra temporary “Nightingale” Crown Courts.
- Run magistrates’ courts 24 hours a day, seven days a week by using section 30 of the Courts Act and enacting another Additional Courts Protocol, as in 2011. Prioritise first-time offences suitable for non-prison sentences, then career criminals.
Judges, lawyers and jurors
- Pay lawyers and judges extra for working unsociable hours, and cover more juror expenses, until the backlog is cleared and rape victims can expect a trial within a reasonable time.
- Offer retired judges an opportunity to sit on cases to clear the backlog, and offer tax-free pay for barristers and judges willing to work on rape and serious sexual-offence cases.
Trial deadlines
- Set an enforceable 12-month limit from reporting rape or another serious violent offence to the end of trial. Allow exceptions only in exceptional cases personally approved by the Home Secretary.
Transparency and accountability
- Publish court sitting days and trial speeds, including anonymised police investigation times, so people can compare performance and hold slow courts to account.
- Require the Criminal Justice Board Steering Committee to explain its two-year gap in meetings. If government rejects these proposals, require it to publish specific plans to cut the backlog.
Government coordination
- Create a Number 10 taskforce chaired by the Prime Minister or chief of staff, meeting once per week. Make clearing the backlog a core priority for the Prime Minister’s office, PPS and chief of staff. Give the taskforce powers to shake up failing teams across Whitehall and drive urgent changes to laws, policy and funding, including rapid drafting of emergency legislation.
Outcome
The court backlog is eliminated. Cases are heard quickly, victims are given justice, and criminals are put behind bars.
03Build Prisons
Emergency legislation
- Change or replace the Prison Act 1952, including section 14, so the Lord Chancellor can designate lawful prison sites with fewer approval and certification requirements and create places quickly.
- Alternatively, pass time-limited emergency laws allowing simpler prison accommodation, including dormitory-style units, while permanent prisons are built.
Prison accommodation
- Assess and pilot secure dormitory-style prisons, like those used in Australia, for suitable prisoners. Set the security standards and legal changes needed to use them temporarily or permanently.
- Turn suitable existing buildings into temporary prisons, with proper safeguards. Options include hotels, holiday camps, unused barracks, hospitals and psychiatric facilities, former immigration detention centres, empty offices, and industrial or storage sites.
Planning and approvals
- Include prisons explicitly in the priority-consent scheme of LFG’s National Priority Infrastructure Bill and pass it into law. Send applications directly to the Secretary of State with a presumption of approval and statutory decision deadlines. Replace separate planning approvals and environmental-assessment procedures with one consent, standard conditions and contributions for environmental protection, transport improvements and nearby communities. Retain protection for excluded land and require equivalent safeguards when replacing environmental permits.
Outcome
Dangerous prisoners are not let out onto Britain’s streets. Criminals are arrested and imprisoned, rather than staying in our communities.
04Ban Dangerous Drivers for Life
Driving bans
- Set a minimum six-year driving ban for driving under the influence of drink or drugs.
- Give repeat drink- or drug-driving offenders lifetime driving bans.
- Give lifetime bans to drivers who kill through dangerous driving.
Law and sentencing guidelines
- Change the law and sentencing guidance so courts use lifetime bans for repeat offenders before they kill someone.
Outcome
Dangerous drivers are off Britain’s roads.
05Grooming gangs
Inquiry leadership and timetable
- Deliver a faster, more transparent national inquiry into organised child sexual abuse. Investigate victims’ experiences, how gangs operated, patterns of abuse, offenders’ ethnicity, institutional failures and cover-ups, and whether sentences were adequate.
- Appoint an experienced serious-crime investigator to chair the inquiry, with no conflict of interest.
- Finish the investigation within 18 months and produce the report within another three months: 21 months in total.
Evidence, transparency and cooperation
- Require every public authority to cooperate. Give the inquiry powers to compel witnesses and demand evidence, with penalties for refusing or hiding, changing or destroying evidence.
- Hold open proceedings, broadcast them live, and publish evidence and reports. Publish transcripts of relevant earlier trials and inquiries, keeping records online for ten years. Only hide information where necessary, including to protect victims and whistle-blowers.
Legal challenges
- Stop court challenges from delaying the inquiry. Bar courts from hearing claims about the actions of the inquiry panel, its staff or the Secretary of State under the Act. Any judicial-review application still allowed must be brought within 14 days, unless a court extends the deadline.
Accountability
- Publicly name institutions and people responsible for enabling abuse, failing to act or covering it up. Recommend changes to laws, policy and institutions to prevent it happening again.
Offenders and complicit institutions
- Deport foreign nationals convicted of sexual offences, unless the Home Secretary finds a compelling public interest against it. Remove British citizenship from dual nationals convicted of these offences.
- Create a criminal offence for councils and police forces whose gross breach of their duty of care leads to these offences, with up to 14 years in prison for public officers responsible.
- Automatically ban offenders from contacting their victims and victims’ families. Stop foreign offenders getting identity documents in a new name, and require sex offenders to tell the police about a new name at least seven days before using it.
Outcome
A single, fast investigation that protects victims, identifies institutional responsibility, and names, shames and blames those responsible.
GET
INVOLVED.
Public pressure turns a proposal into a political choice.
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