Neil O\u2019Brien was until recently a Minister at the Department of Levelling up. He is MP for Harborough.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The cost of living and the health crisis may be top of the new Prime Minister\u2019s in-tray, but crime and antisocial behaviour won\u2019t be far behind.<\/span><\/p>\n The proportion of crimes resulting in a charge or summons has fallen by two thirds<\/a>, from 16 per cent in 2015 to 5.6 per cent today. A quarter of people in England live in areas where the police are in special measures.<\/p>\n The BBC Economics Editor recently went on social media<\/a> complaining that despite having a GPS tracker on his stolen bike showing where it is, the police won\u2019t investigate.<\/p>\n Countless offenders commit hideous crimes, and then it turns out they had a whole history<\/a> of similar offences.<\/p>\n As James Frayne wrote on this site<\/a>, people are: \u201cfed up with anti-social behaviour and low-level disorder\u2026 newly-sprayed graffiti; vandalised memorials and historic buildings; remains of drug use strewn about parks and playgrounds\u2026 a sense that streets and shared spaces don\u2019t always belong to the decent majority.\u201d<\/p>\n The poor and the weak suffer most from crime. People in the poorest tenth of areas in England are twice as likely<\/a> to suffer violent crime than people in the top tenth, and the gap has increased.<\/p>\n The poorest fifth of people have hospital admission rates for violence <\/span>five times higher<\/span><\/a> than those of the most affluent fifth. The recent murder of Thomas O\u2019Halloran on his mobility scooter shocked the nation, but will have sent a particular shudder through others of the same age. Disabled people are <\/span>more likely<\/span><\/a> to be victims of violent crime and antisocial behaviour.<\/span><\/p>\n So the new Prime Minister must come down like a sledgehammer on crime and antisocial behaviour.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s six things they should do:<\/p>\n Jail super-prolific offenders for longer<\/b><\/p>\n Just a tenth of offenders now commit over half of all crimes<\/a>, with four per cent of crimes committed by 0.2 per cent of all criminals.<\/p>\n Locking super-prolific criminals up for longer is one of the most effective ways to cut crime. But the justice system hasn\u2019t responded to the concentration of crime.<\/p>\n The number of offenders with more than 50 previous convictions who were convicted but spared jail rose from 1,299 in 2007 to 3,196 in 2018. The number with over 100 convictions who were spared jail doubled to 295. Why should anyone with over 100 previous convictions not be jailed?<\/p>\n Over that decade, 206,000 criminals with 25 previous convictions avoided prison for their next offence. Instead of being dealt with properly, they get endless community sentences: the number of those eventually jailed who had previously received 10 or more community sentences increased from 3,853 in 2007 to 6,216 in 2018. The proportion of those jailed who had five or more previous community sentences rose from a quarter to a third.<\/p>\n In his leadership campaign and early speeches as Prime Minister, Boris Johnson highlighted<\/a> research I\u2019d done on these super-prolific offenders. The issue was raised again (though buried deep) in in the 2020 Sentencing White Paper<\/a>.<\/p>\n But while we\u2019ve somewhat increased sentences across the board, nothing much has happened to target proper sentences on prolific offenders.<\/p>\n Enforce the law on knives<\/b><\/p>\n Under Section 28 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, adults convicted for a second time or more of carrying a knife must receive a minimum six month prison sentence unless there are \u201cparticular circumstances\u201d making it \u201cunjust to do so in all the circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n The proportion of those jailed for repeat knife offences has increased. But the courts\u2019 idea of exceptional \u201cunjust\u201d circumstances has seen half of offenders let off: in the year ending March 2019 nearly half (44 per cent) of over 16s who were convicted for a second offence of carrying a knife were not given an immediate custodial sentence.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t defund the police \u2013 defend the police<\/b><\/p>\n A thug recently got just 15 months in jail for driving a car into a female police officer in my constituency while fleeing a robbery.<\/p>\n The proportion of all those convicted of assaulting a police officer who were jailed declined from 17 per cent in 2007 to just 13 per cent in 2018. At the same time the average length of a custodial sentence for such offences has also declined, from 2.8 months to just 2.2 months over the same period.<\/p>\n We should have a policy to give those who assault police officers truly exemplary sentences.<\/p>\n Renew focus on crime prevention technologies<\/b><\/p>\n When crime was high in the late 1980s and 1990s, there was a concerted push to prevent crime. Families installed burglar alarms, while car firms were pressed by government to make cars harder to steal, changing door buttons and keys and installing immobilisers.<\/p>\n But focus on this has drifted. By now technology, should make cars and other expensive items like fancy bikes almost un-stealable with onboard GPS trackers.<\/p>\n We also need to do the same for online fraud, encouraging social media firms and technology manufacturers to design out new forms of crime.<\/p>\n Roll out new approaches to drug addiction<\/b><\/p>\n The Home Office estimates that 45 per cent of acquisitive crime is committed by regular heroin\/crack cocaine users and 25 pe r cent-33 per cent of the fall in crime between 1995 and 2012 was due to the \u201cTrainspotting generation\u201d dying or receiving treatment.<\/p>\n There are successful approaches we should bring to the UK. Hawaii\u2019s HOPE probation programme conducts frequent random drug tests. People who fail, or don\u2019t show up, get swift, certain and appropriate jail terms. After one year, HOPE probationers were 55 per cent less likely to be arrested for a new crime. It has been successfully replicated in various other places<\/a>. It should come here.<\/p>\n Kit Malthouse has heroically fought institutional resistance for a decade to roll out sobriety tags which detect whether alcoholic offenders are drinking again. They are fantastically successful<\/a> \u2013 offenders fitted with them stayed sober 97 per cent of the time. We should use them more widely. New technology will allow the same thing for drugs<\/a>, and we should be putting drug monitoring tags on problem offenders as soon as possible.<\/p>\n Another opportunity is Buprenorphine (sometimes called Buvidal), a slow-release medication which can help break addiction<\/a>. It\u2019s showing great<\/a> promise<\/a> in reducing crime. We need to move fast from tests<\/a> to rollout.<\/p>\n Get back to broken windows theory, and create orderly places<\/b><\/p>\n Criminologists James Wilson and George Kelling identified the link<\/a> between low level disorder and higher level crime durig the 1980s. In the 1990s, the visionary New York police chief, Bill Bratton, put Broken Windows<\/a> policing into effect, and crushed crime. It has two elements: creating orderly places, and making sure lower level crimes get swift and certain punishment.<\/p>\n To create orderly places, community payback offenders shouldn\u2019t simply beput into charity shops. Instead, they should be helping deliver a massive national drive to reduce graffiti and tidy town centres.<\/p>\n To get swift and certain justice for low level offenders, we need to totally rework police processes: solving the shortage of custody suites; using non-designated suites; stripping gold plating from PACE to free up officer time; using non-police staff to free up officers\u2019 time (i.e: driving people back to where they were arrested); cutting the time police wait for lawyers to turn up by using resident solicitors for low level offences; getting magistrates integrated into police stations so we can go straight from arrest to sentencing for low level crime.<\/p>\n The most central finding in criminology is that punishment needs to be swift and certain<\/a> after crime. The Home Office agrees<\/a>, but our system currently doesn\u2019t deliver<\/a> that.<\/p>\n The new Prime Minister must do whatever it takes to change it.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/conservativehome.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Screen-Shot-2022-09-05-at-06.36.59.png\")
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