In my view, implementing rapid sanctions alone is unlikely to promote reduced drug use or offending. Desistance and recovery rarely involve a simple, linear path to success. If every relapse is met with 5 days in custody, it is hard to envisage how offenders will achieve the long term stability and abstinence required to build a personally fulfilling and law-abiding lifestyle.
Reform argues that the current system does not encourage innovation or quality. Whether provision is public or private it is typically a local monopoly with limited or no incentives to improve performance. Too often national and local commissioners prioritise price over effectiveness.
The central conclusion of the report is that the Criminal Justice System’s approach to young black men of African Caribbean descent is based on the supposition that they belong to a gang, and that young Muslim men are, or soon will be, engaged in terrorist activity.
Some of the key claims made about cybercrime in the US which, unsurprisingly, appears to be growing rapidly year on year are: 378 million victims per year (includes a lot of repeat victimisation); 30,000 websites hacked every day; Mobile devices most at risk
One third of commissioners expected to reduce spending on residential treatment and it’s hard not to think that this would be a much higher figure if the survey had been done after the Chancellor’s recent statement about unprecedented cuts in public services. It seems that the future of drug and alcohol residential treatment is at best uncertain and at worst likely to shrink considerably.
The inspectors made a total of 67 recommendations to address the concerns they identified. It is too early to say whether these issues are teething problems inevitable given the massive change that TR involves or fundamental flaws that will get worse over time. It will be intriguing to see whether performance improves or deteriorates when new providers take over CRCs in early 2015.
The infographic below shows what big business private prisons have become in the USA. As you can see, the number of private prisons has grown exponentially in the last 20 years.
As we have come to expect, there are significant benefits to the SIB approach but also some serious challenges. Most stakeholders involved in SIBs, especially service providers, had a positive experience to the extent that most see themselves as likely to be involved in delivering Social Impact Bonds in the future. The Payment by Results approach places an intense focus on outcomes and greater impact for beneficiaries.
A recent chilling report on the Talking Drugs website which found that over half the 58 countries in the world that still have the death penalty have made it applicable to people who have committed non–violent drug crimes.
It will be interesting to see if PCCs build on this promising start and make the voluntary sector a keystone of their work in tackling crime locally. They will face two substantial challenges over the next two years. Firstly, the outcome of the general election will have a significant impact.
“It is not the force which pays the highest price of crime-recording failures, but those victims and the wider community to whom justice may be denied. This can be especially true for the vulnerable, and those who suffer more serious crimes. Failure properly to record crime today may not only fail today’s victims; it places others at risk of becoming victims tomorrow.”
Y-STOP recently publicised a useful infographic showing information about the number of young people under 18 stopped and searched in the year up to March 2014. Just 11% of these stops led to arrests and the Metropolitan Police carried out 39% of all stop and searches on young people.
