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2010+22crime cover:Statesman supplements 01/06/2010 12:22 Page 1 POLICY REPORT No6 Crime costs Richard Garside, Erwin James, Frances Crook interview 2010+22crime contents pg3:Statesman supplements 01/06/2010 12:00 Page 3 CRIME POLICY REPORT No 6 New Statesman 7th Floor John Carpenter House John Carpenter Street Contents London EC4Y 0AN Tel 020 7936 6400 Fax 020 7936 6501 [email protected] 7 June 2010 Subscription inquiries: Stephen Brasher sbrasher@ newstatesman.co.uk 0800 731 8496 Supplement Editor Bibi van der Zee Researchers Morariu Denisa, Caroline Crampton Project Co-ordinator Adam Bowie Art Director David Gibbons Photography Editor Rebecca McClelland Production What can we do to get out of the cycle of crime . and punishment? Leon Parks Sub-editor Vicky Hutchings Publisher What lies ahead? Spencer Neal spencer@ The new bunch at the Home Office are, The challenge is further complicated by the newstatesman.co.uk without a doubt, feeling pretty nervous recession. So far we have not seen the surge of Front cover about what lies ahead of them. Their recession-linked crime that had been Anja Wohlstrom predecessors presided over a big drop in expected. But when harsh cuts begin to bite, crime alongside a huge surge in expenditure that could all change very quickly. Public Head of Sales Matt Dowsett on police and a large growth of our prison order may be threatened by widespread 020 7915 9603 population. No one is exactly sure how, and strikes. The police will need to be kept happy, Business Development Executive even if, the two are linked. But the challenge but it looks as if our new Home Secretary, Jonathan Gerlis that faces this administration is working out Theresa May, may already be facing 020 7936 6872 how to spend less on our police and how to backbench revolt after making an unpopular Account Manager Peter Coombs empty out our swollen prisons, without announcement about elected police 020 7936 6873 seeing a surge in crime for which they will be commissioners. In short, it will be business as l Reprints and held directly responsible. usual. Who’d be the Home Secretary? Syndication Rights permissions@ This supplement, and other policy reports, can be downloaded from the newstatesman.co.uk NS website at newstatesman.com/supplements Articles 4 The cost of crime Richard Garside wonders how the coalition will cope with our First published as a supplement enormous expenditure on crime to the New Statesman issue of 7 June 2010. 6 No going back Sophie Elmhirst interviews Frances Crook about how reoffending © New Statesman Ltd. All rights rates can be cut: through rehabilitation reserved. Registered as a newspaper in the UK and USA. 8 Life inside can have meaning too Erwin James explains how prison in the old days offered him training and education to cope with life on the outside The New Statesman 10 What happens next? Ben Ferguson on what the coalition government has in is printed on 100 store for Britain per cent recycled 14 Further information eco-friendly paper Kids Count is a grassroots organisation that aims to find practical solutions to a broad range of issues that affect children and young people in urban and rural communities. It is determined to put young people at the heart of policy making and the family. Kids Count has recently launched its Centre of Excellence that offers a diverse range of education, training and workshops. Kids Count needs your support to continue its life changing work. For more information or to become a supporter, or to request a copy of the grassroots document on knife crime, “Bringing the Voice of the Street to The House”, please contact Linda Lawrence on 07863200751 or [email protected] GETTY IMAGES (ABOVE) 7 JUNE 2010 | NEW STATESMAN | 3 2010+22crime garside pg4-5:Statesman supplements 01/06/2010 12:04 Page 4 CRIME Somehow the government must start cutting our bloated crime budgets, but where to start? The cost of crime By Richard Garside Graphic by Simone Maxwell At his creepy press conference with Nick Communities and Local Government; expenditure rose, in real terms, by nearly Clegg the day after he finally jostled his the Scottish Office and the Northern Ire- 50 per cent. By 2009, overall police ex- way into No 10, David Cameron spoke of land Office. Other departments spending penditure was £14.5bn. Police numbers the “difficult times” that lay ahead as the smaller amounts were Children, Schools correspondingly increased to close to Tory-Lib Dem coalition dealt with a “ter- and Families, Transport, the Law Offi- 142,000 police officers in that year. rible economic inheritance”. The public fi- cers’ Department, the Welsh Office, and The story is similar for the prison and nances, his newly appointed deputy the Northern Ireland Executive. probation services. Both have witnessed added, were “in a mess”. Hot on their heels This is big money by any standards and large expenditure rises under Labour, the new Chancellor, George Osborne, has a big increase on earlier times. Adjusted with a corresponding rise in staffing, pris- launched a new Office of Budget Respon- for inflation, spending on public order oners and individuals under probation sibility and has accused the Labour admin- and safety has doubled over the past 20 supervision. At a time of supposedly istration of being “totally irresponsible” falling crime rates, prison numbers are at with the nation’s finances. a record high. The probation service case- The new occupants of Downing Street Police expenditure has load has grown even faster. This bloated were never going to be dispassionate risen in real terms by criminal justice bureaucracy is a key part commentators on Gordon Brown’s gov- of the legacy the Tory-Lib Dem coalition ernment. But whatever the truth of their nearly 50 per cent has inherited from Labour. comments on Labour’s economic stew- That is not to say that criminal justice ardship, a decade of cuts and austerity is years. Margaret Thatcher’s government staff are kicking their heels in happy indo- what everyone is now expecting. So as was “only” spending an inflation-ad- lence, the lucky beneficiaries of govern- the Treasury scouts about for budgets to justed £15.6bn on public order and safety ment largesse. The demands on front-line cut, what are the prospects for that mish- in 1987-88, a figure that rose to £21.1bn in staff time, if anything, are greater now mash of services – the police, the proba- 1996-97, the eve of Labour’s long period than they were back in the late 1990s. The tion and prison service and the courts – in office. massive prison building programme un- that collectively make up the criminal It is not difficult to see where a lot of der Labour has accounted for a good deal justice system? this money has gone. Take the police, for of additional expenditure. Money has also Criminal justice expenditure is spread instance. In 1998, there were just shy of been squandered on wasteful reorganisa- across various departments of state under 125,000 police officers in England and tion after reorganisation, ill-thought-out the rather Orwellian-sounding “public Wales. Police numbers dropped during and expensive IT projects and other “in- order and safety” category. In 2007-2008, Labour’s first term, as expenditure was novations”. Managerial grades have according to Treasury figures, the UK squeezed. But, from 2001, the financial grown in some areas, often with little spent £31.4bn on public order and safety. spigot was opened and the money gushed obvious rationale. And now David Cam - The biggest-spending departments were out. As a recent report from the Centre for eron’s coalition needs to find big savings the Home Office and the Ministry of Jus- Crime and Justice Studies points out, in on public spending. tice, followed by the Department for the ten years between 1999-2009 police On the face of it, criminal justice should 4 | NEW STATESMAN | 7 JUNE 2010 2010+22crime garside pg4-5:Statesman supplements 01/06/2010 12:04 Page 5 CRIME be one of the easier targets for public particular criminal justice processes and Max Weber argued, the state claims a mo- spending cuts. Politically, the public will metrics. Indeed, it is conceivable that the nopoly on the legitimate use of violence in feel the cuts in schools or hospitals budg- official crime rate would have fallen dur- the enforcement of order, the criminal jus- ets, social security or public transport ing Labour’s period in office regardless of tice process is the embodiment of that much more than they will cuts to criminal their various criminal justice reforms. claim. Particularly at a time of economic justice budgets. Yet you only have to state the case for distress, the maintenance of social order Today’s sizeable criminal justice sys- big cuts in police numbers or a halving of becomes a dominant concern for govern- tem is also something of a historical the prison population to realise how re- ment. The nature/size of penal regimes is anomaly. With more than 85,000 in- mote such a prospect currently is. For one also closely related to the political eco- mates, the prison population in England thing, individuals’ livelihoods are at nomic arrangements of any given society. and Wales is close to double what it was stake. The Westminster policy-wonks The UK has developed a large criminal jus- 20 years earlier. The previous Conserva- who blithely call for “efficiency savings” tice system, in other words, because it is so tive governments managed to get by with here and spending cuts there tend to for- bad at addressing social distress and dys- locking up far fewer people than New get that they are calling for people to be function in other, more inclusive, ways.