ing of their lives somehow makes it even harder to bear.
It strikes at our hearts, all our hearts, in different ways. For me it brought back memories of the appalling murder of the even younger Jamie Bulger, which occurred when I was Home Secretary. Yet that horrific murder was one of its kind. The murder of Rhys Jones is the latest in a string of deaths by shooting in different parts of the country which have claimed so many young lives in recent weeks.
So it is not surprising that many searching questions are now being asked about the failings of our society, about the nature of our responsibility, as parents, neighbours and citizens, and about our criminal justice system.
David Cameron was absolutely right to draw attention again, on Friday, as he has done so often in the past, to the need to heal our fractured society. He is right to acknowledge that politicians do not have all the answers.
But, as he and David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, know well, the area for which politicians are directly responsible is the criminal justice system. It is that system which frames the response of society to crime, the way in which we deal with criminals and the measures we think appropriate to protect the rest of society from their evil acts.
So perhaps this is the right moment to look back at what has happened to our criminal justice system over the last 15 years.
I became Home Secretary in May 1993. I was told that the rise in crime, which we had suffered for decades under Labour and Conservative Governments, was inevitable. I was told there was nothing I could do about it – that my job was to manage public expectations in the face of this inexorable trend.
I didn’t take that advice. And that autumn I announced a comprehensive system of measures – 27 in all – to make a start on tackling the problem across the board. They were designed to help deter criminals from committing crime, to help detect them if they did, to help convict them when they were brought to court and to help punish them properly when they were convicted.
Tony Blair, then Shadow Home Secretary, described them as “gimmicks”. But they were all implemented and they contributed to the unprecedented eighteen percent fall in crime which took place during my period in office.
That statistic is incontrovertible. Unfortunately many of those used in this debate are not. That is partly because there are two sets of crime statistics, those recorded by the police and those which are the result of a sample survey, the British Crime Survey. And partly because of the unscrupulous way in which Labour politicians have used, or abused, them.
Neither method of measuring crime is perfect. Many crimes are not reported to the police so do not appear in the recorded crime figures. The survey, on the other hand, quite apart from the limitations which arise because it is a sample, albeit a large one, excludes altogether, important categories of crime. These include murder and rape, offences against children and crimes against businesses which include fraud and shoplifting.
As it happens crime fell on both measures when I was Home Secretary – the first fall in the British Crime Survey ever recorded.
The same, alas, has not been true under Labour. And here we come to the first example of the unscrupulous way in which they use these figures. When they attack the record of the last Conservative Government – right back to 1979 – they always refer to the recorded crime figures. When they claim to have caused crime to fall since they came to office they refer to the British Crime Survey.
You will have guessed the reason. On the recorded crime figures crime has gone up under Labour. In 1998 Jack Straw changed the basis on which the figures are compiled – which makes it difficult to make a direct comparison between the latest figures and those for 1997. But the new figures for 1998/99 were 5.1 million. Those for 2006/7 were 5.4 million. Contrary to their frequent claims crime has not fallen under Labour. It has gone up.
Indeed even under the British Crime Survey, after small falls in recent years, the latest figures are back on the increase.
When it comes to gun crime Labour, yes even under the “new” stewardship of Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith, are equally devious.
Gun crime, too, is measured in two ways. One excludes air weapons, the other includes them. When I was Home Secretary both fell by over 30 percent. But most people would think the more relevant set are the ones which exclude air rifles, which are most commonly used for shooting rabbits.
Under Labour both have increased – those including air weapons by over 20 percent, those excluding air weapons by over 40 percent.
The morning after the Rhys Jones tragedy, Jacqui Smith claimed on Radio 5 Live that gun crime has been falling. That is true, so far as the confirmed figures are concerned, only if you just look at the last three years and use the figures including air weapons.
The statistical evidence, therefore, properly analysed and understood, shows up starkly the extent of Labour’s failure on crime.
Why has this come about? After all the rhetoric has, in many ways, been indistinguishable from mine.
I believe there are two reasons. The first lies in their ineradicable obsession with spin as a substitute for action. The second lies directly at the door of Gordon Brown.
New Labour have always been more interested in the next day’s headlines, rather than in the often boring business of getting things done.
So we had the endless stream of announcements – they really were gimmicks – from Mr Blair and his Home Secretaries. You probably remember most of them – cashpoint fines for yobs, rewards for problem teenagers, night courts, the Youth Opportunities Card, Super Nannies, Family Sin Bins – the list goes on and on. Rarely, despite the endless legislation, the announcements and re-announcements, was there any proper follow-through.
The second reason also lies deep in Labour’s DNA – a proclaimed willingness to achieve the end, but a complete failure to provide the means. This is directly the responsibility of Gordon Brown.
Even since 1997 Labour Home Secretaries have encouraged the courts to send more people to prison. Indeed much of the legislation they passed had as its stated objective the lengthening of prison sentences.
As the author of the phrase “prison works” I am the last person to criticise that. But it is wanton irresponsibility to act in this way without creating the extra prison accommodation that is needed. This is not rocket science. The Government were repeatedly warned about what was happening. They – in the form of Gordon Brown – wilfully refused to heed those warnings and to make the money available.
This is not just a question of physical capacity. When there is severe overcrowding – with prisoners being moved around the estate in a desperate attempt to fit everyone in – the first things that suffer are the education and rehabilitation programmes which are so crucial in reducing reoffending.
This abject failure has led to the ignominious humiliations of having to order the early release of thousands of prisoners. What message does that send to those tempted to commit crimes?
And just last week we were told that as a result of another Government failure, thousands of dangerous prisoners, those subject to indeterminate sentences for public protection, might have to be released as well. The judge in the case described the situation as “very worrying”. That may yet turn out to be the understatement of the decade.
Most of these failures were foreseeable and actually forseen.
Labour’s lamentable failure to discharge the first duty of government – the duty to protect the public – should be enough on its own to disqualify it from any prospect of re-election.
Yet, as we have shown in the past, such failure is not inevitable. The Conservative alternative, under David Cameron, is more than capable of remedying this shocking state of affairs. It is up to the electorate to give them the opportunity to do so.
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