Power Down, Policy
Exchange’s Report on Police and Crime Commissioners has the sub title “A plan
for a cheaper, more effective justice system” but it might as well have
been “We Expand or We Die”. There are no
detailed costings to stand up the cost argument and no real evidence to support
the effectiveness claim. Rather it it places PCC’s at the head of a localism
crusade to take control of the Whitehall
While not going as far as last year’s Reform report which argued that PCC’s should take over the budgets and responsibility for pretty much all of the criminal justice agencies, in one sense it goes further suggesting that in ten years PCC’s might morph into public safety commissioners or even local mayors. Sooner than that , the report envisages PCC’s as ministers for the local criminal justice system with “the political power to set the agenda, hold agencies within his/her purview to account for performance and enact reforms to ensure a more efficient and effective system at the local level.”
While not going as far as last year’s Reform report which argued that PCC’s should take over the budgets and responsibility for pretty much all of the criminal justice agencies, in one sense it goes further suggesting that in ten years PCC’s might morph into public safety commissioners or even local mayors. Sooner than that , the report envisages PCC’s as ministers for the local criminal justice system with “the political power to set the agenda, hold agencies within his/her purview to account for performance and enact reforms to ensure a more efficient and effective system at the local level.”
There’s much to be
said in the arguments for improved coordination, co-terminosity between
agencies and pooled budgets. As the Howard League Commission on prisons said in
2010 “the current criminal justice system not only wastes money but it is
overly centralised and driven by misleading and often meaningless targets.” It
argued that the National Offender Management Service should be broken up and “replaced
by an agenda rooted in localism and in engaging with communities to seek
meaningful outcomes”.
On the face of it such an agenda could be driven by the PCC’s as Policy Exchange propose. But there are other ways that this could be done. OutsideLondon
An alternative model could build on local authorities, developing perhaps a hybrid body to commission services to prevent crime, implement sanctions and rehabilitate offenders. This is a direction of travel proposed by the Local Government Information Unit in their 2009 report Primary Justice. Such a model would build in incentives to reduce costly and unproductive imprisonment and invest instead in the kind of targeted measures which reduce crime and demand on the criminal justice system.
Such an approach would show that that the answers to crime and public safety lie not with the police but with the social agencies. It is a model that should prove more attractive to the Labour party.
On the face of it such an agenda could be driven by the PCC’s as Policy Exchange propose. But there are other ways that this could be done. Outside
An alternative model could build on local authorities, developing perhaps a hybrid body to commission services to prevent crime, implement sanctions and rehabilitate offenders. This is a direction of travel proposed by the Local Government Information Unit in their 2009 report Primary Justice. Such a model would build in incentives to reduce costly and unproductive imprisonment and invest instead in the kind of targeted measures which reduce crime and demand on the criminal justice system.
Such an approach would show that that the answers to crime and public safety lie not with the police but with the social agencies. It is a model that should prove more attractive to the Labour party.
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