This week a speech was given by the former director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer. The speech proposed that “safer streets” could be achieved by “more police on the beat… stamping out anti-social behaviour in every community… because nobody should feel insecure on the streets they call home.”
The speech also described a so-called “Neighbourhood Policing guarantee”. This would “deliver 13,000 extra neighbourhood police… visible on the beat… cracking down on anti-social behaviour… a named, contactable officer in every community… a relief for millions of people scared to walk their streets”.
Of course, both “stamping out” and “cracking down on” anti-social behaviour is to be welcomed. Perhaps there are other energetic-sounding phrases which could be used as well. But it is doubtful that more police, whether visible and named or not, is a single solution.
What there also needs to be is substantial investment in our criminal court system and in legal aid. There needs to be investment, as a former chief prosecutor should know, in the Crown Prosecution Service, and in our probation and prisons systems.
And there also needs to be a fundamental review of that great unmentionable—drugs policy—which is more closely connected to crime and anti-social behaviour and unsafe streets than any ambitious politician will ever dare admit.
In essence: “stamping out” and “cracking down on” anti-social behaviour require more than action-verbs in a vacuous speech, and it requires more than just extra police. For what can the police do with the offenders if there is a backlog in the courts, under-resourced prosecutors, non-existent legal aid for the defence to assist the court, no prisons for the serious offenders, and a generally inadequate probation service?
Yet none of these other things were mentioned in this speech by the former DPP, who is now prime minister and so is in a position to do something about the problems he describes. He can now, to use a word, “reset” the entire approach of public policy towards crime and anti-social behaviour. His government has the benefit of a five-year parliament and a huge majority. It is a once-in-a-political-lifetime opportunity to actually get something done.
But nothing looks like it will get done, other than the optics and sounds about more police. The hope and perhaps expectation is that that will be enough for voters to re-elect Labour to power at the end of this parliament. And indeed: it may well be enough, which is the depressing thing.
What it will not be enough to do is address the blight of anti-social behaviour and crime on our streets. For what works well in politics rarely works well as policy. Our unsafe streets will continue to exist. And in a few years there will be another speech, either from this prime minister or another one, which will announce more stamping-outs and cracking-downs.
You cannot even blame the political system for this. You could understand why a government facing frequent elections, with no sustainable majority, and with inexperienced ministers, would adopt such facile approach to policy. But none of those things are present here. Instead, we have a full parliamentary term, a 150-plus majority, and a prime minister who once headed the CPS. For once the system in and of itself cannot be blamed.
It is a problem of our wider political culture. Crime and policing policy needs to be, and be seen to be, illiberal—especially when there is a Labour government. It is hard to think of any Labour home secretary after Roy Jenkins who was more progressive in office than any Conservative one.
Other than perhaps a few outliers such as David Waddington, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman, it may even be safe to say that most Labour home secretaries since 1967 have been more “right wing” than their Tory counterparts. And still, over 50 years later, the steady beat about police on the beat continues. There seems to be no alternative.
A cynical person may conclude that there is a mutually beneficial relationship between crime and the same-old rhetoric about crime. If anti-social behaviour actually vanished, then perhaps there would need to be new ways of getting people to vote. Perhaps. But it is unlikely we will ever find out.
And so how do we deal with what some conservative commentators call the “broken windows” problem will keep on being a broken record. For as another election-winning former barrister and Labour prime minister might have put it: we must be both tough on crime, and tough on the causes of not getting elected—and re-elected.
