Downing Street Says » Crime Statistics

» Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Crime Statistics

Asked what the platform was for the crime statistics, the PMOS said that it was to show how crime had fallen since 1997, and it underlined the basic message of what the Prime Minister was saying this morning. Whether that was fear of crime, victims of crime, or crime itself, it showed the statistical breakdown of just how much they had fallen since 1997, and it was useful as a reminder whenever the stats came out. The top line of what the Prime Minister was saying, however, was that for the 100,000 repeat criminals who committed 50% of all crime, we had to devise a way to deal with them, and to deal with them in such a way, not as some coverage today was suggesting that we went soft on them. Rather, that we actually combined prison, where it was appropriate, with rehabilitation, as so much of repeat crime was related to drugs. Therefore, if the drugs issues were treated, the repeat offenders would be stopped. Where that had happened in a pilot scheme involving 7000, we had seen a 62% reduction in court convictions over 17 months, so that showed that it worked.

Asked if these policies were implemented, would that result in fewer people going to prison, the PMOS said that this was not an alternative to prison. Rather, it was in addition to prison. If it worked in the medium term, then there were would be fewer repeat offenders, therefore, fewer people would go to prison. The PMOS said again that this was not an alternative to prison, but in addition to prison. It was a false choice to say that rehabilitation was an alternative to prison, as it was not. Someone would go to prison, they would serve their sentence, and they then would go into a rehabilitation programme to ensure that they cured their drugs problem. Therefore, the chances of them repeating their offences would become less.

Asked what the budget for this was, the PMOS said that that was built into the considerations around the CSR.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.