Ignore the relics – Labour needs an innovative response to Tory prison plans

By Andrew Neilson

Next week the Howard League for Penal Reform, in partnership with Tribune Magazine and the trade union Napo, are hosting a hustings for the Labour leadership candidates on criminal justice. It is the only single issue hustings the candidates will speak at and anyone who can get down to Islington Town Hall on the evening of 21 July can register their attendance here.

This particular hustings could not be more timely. ‘Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ was the New Labour mantra, although it seldom got past the first half of that phrase. The doctrine of triangulation, learnt by Tony Blair from Bill Clinton, decreed that the party should out-right the right-wing on their home territory. Law and order was a classic example of this.

Like it or not, Labour supporters should realise that the coalition is making some serious moves in the correct direction on a number of issues. A new form of triangulation is now developing, where the coalition moves to the liberal left of what some would call New Labour authoritarianism.

June saw two very significant speeches by government ministers on criminal justice. Justice Secretary Ken Clarke and Nick Herbert, Minister of State for policing and criminal justice, signalled a major change of direction on law and order after almost two decades of ballooning prison numbers and an ever more expansive penal system. This is one area of public policy were cuts to budgets could trigger radical and welcome reform.

While Clarke’s speech received the most press coverage, Herbert’s made the case for reform in more detail. ‘Too often’, he said, ‘we’ve assumed that success equates to size’. Herbert pointed out that the criminal justice system already costs almost £20 billion a year, making it one of the most expensive criminal justice systems in the world. More of our GDP is spent on law and order than France, Ireland or Italy. By attacking the size of the criminal justice system, Herbert was attacking the numbers game played by successive governments of both political stripes.

There is nothing progressive about equating a safe society with ever higher police numbers and a year on year record prison population. Labour supporters should be able to recognise that lasting solutions to crime are more likely to reside outside of the criminal justice system by directly tackling issues such as housing, education, drug addiction and mental health.

A detailed discussion on how this can be done in an era of cuts – and how the coalition’s putative policies can be criticised – is for another time. What is significant at this point is the major shift in rhetoric that Ken Clarke in particular has initiated.

How do the Labour leadership candidates respond to a Conservative justice secretary accusing predecessors such as David Blunkett and John Reid of posturing with the “cheque book in one hand and the Daily Mail in the other”? How do the Labour leadership candidates respond to a Conservative justice secretary who characterises prison as all too often a “costly and ineffectual approach that fails to turn criminals into law-abiding citizens”?

The temptation will be to keep up the same old New Labour triangulation. There is good reason why Labour politicians find it difficult to be progressive on law and order. Not only is there the threat of appearing ‘soft’, but many Labour MPs also represent constituencies where crime and anti-social behaviour is a major issue.

The answer is not to stick to the old, tired rhetoric. Many Labour MPs will instinctively realise that when Labour fights to support the most vulnerable and society’s most forgotten this should include those people who end up in prison, where histories of social failure are commonplace.

There are new policy ideas developing in criminal justice that the Labour candidates should look at. The concept of ‘justice reinvestment’ has received little attention from the coalition thus far and might be fertile ground for a constructive opposition. Ideas around double devolution and empowering communities are emerging policy within progressive politics and justice reinvestment is a perfect example of what this would look like in criminal justice.

Justice reinvestment would see a great deal of the money saved by closing prisons and directly reinvesting funds in the very communities where crime is of most concern. If residents of crime-ridden estates could see real benefits to their quality of life, that would do more for them than a hundred ASBOs.

The siren voices of relics like Jack Straw should be ignored. Labour has a once in a generation opportunity to respond positively to the direction the coalition has signalled and then figure out an alternative agenda to deliver the same broad goal, which the Howard League sums up in our strapline: less crime, safer communities, fewer people in prison.

Ed Miliband has already repudiated New Labour’s law and order policies, and others will follow. Next week’s hustings is a golden opportunity to smoke out real differences in the Labour leadership candidates on this crucial issue.