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JOHN HUMPHRYS: A few days ago we had
headlines on the front pages telling us that Britain is now the most crime-ridden
society in the western world. Tomorrow we shall have the details of the
government's plans to tackle crime over the next ten years. But this morning
we have headlines about a leaked government memo that says not only have
they failed to catch enough criminals, but that the new plans for sentencing
will make them look too soft on crime. The Home Office Minister Paul Boateng
is with me.
Mr Boateng, this new plan
it seems is just another attempt to appear tough on crime, because we know
the reality is different. You have not been tough on crime.
PAUL BOATENG: On the contrary what we have
done is to preside, the first time a government's ever achieved this, over
a situation in which crime will be lower at the General Election whenever
it comes than it was at the outset of this government. Crime down by ten
per cent, we inherited a Criminal Justice System that was under-resourced,
unco-ordinated. We have addressed both those issues. We inherited a Criminal
Justice System which was failing to detect, failing to convict, failing
to deter or adequately rehabilitate. That was reality. Crime doubled
under the Conservatives.
HUMPHRYS: Well, we'll come to those
figures in a minute if we may.
BOATENG: ..... that's the reality
John.
HUMPHRYS But the reality.....
BOATENG: But we do need to address
that, and this Crime Plan in a bold and imaginative way, and you don't
expect me to discuss the details here today, does just that, and it backs
it up with resources.
HUMPHRYS: Well, I.....
BOATENG: ...based on a determination
to ensure that we actually restore confidence in the Criminal Justice System.
HUMPHRYS: You talk about catching
criminals. I'll rely for my evidence if I may in part at any rate, on
the memo from Mr Straw's own advisor Justin Russell, who says, and I quote,
that your performance in catching criminals has been in quotation marks,
"poor".
BOATENG: You will excuse me John
if I don't get too aerated about a memo of unknown prominence...
HUMPHRYS: I just told you......
BOATENG: Which I certainly haven't
seen, which there is some doubt that the Home Secretary ever saw...
HUMPHRYS: Not much doubt..
BOATENG: ...about a speech John,
that was delivered last September.
HUMPHRYS: Two weeks ago the memo
was written.
BOATENG: Excuse me if I don't get
aerated about that. What I will tell you and what I do say is that you
know, we do have a job of work to do in relation to the Criminal Justice
System. It is perfectly true that we do need to make sure that the police,
the courts, the probation service work better in order to tackle that hundred-thousand
- this is what the research says - there are a hundred thousand criminals
who are persistent, responsible for about half the offences that are committed.
Of that hundred-thousand a half of them are under the age of twenty-one,
two thirds have drug problems, a third have been in care, and that's why
when you're talking about crime you've got to talk about it from a holistic
perspective that says: yes of course detection, punishment, protection,
but also the work we've been doing to tackle the underlying causes of crime.
HUMPHRYS: Ah, well, that's the
point you see, the work you've been doing. And that's why it's important
to look back as well as forward because it's really important to assess
your record, and the memo that you don't approve of, but there we are it
is there now on the public record, says that it has actually got worse
(INTERRUPTION) your record - but alright, ......
BOATENG: To be fair John, it doesn't
say that.
HUMPHRYS: Well....
BOATENG: Whatever the memo says,
and as I say I've never seen it, I doubt if the Home Secretary's
ever seen it, whatever it says...
HUMPHRYS: Oh, I'm sorry, if you
haven't seen it how do you know what it says.
BOATENG: But what it does, I mean
I've read the same newspaper with great interest.
HUMPHRYS: Well, we're singing from
the same hymn-sheet. Let me give you the figures.
BOATENG: ... but a rather unreliable
one. What I do say - I'd love to have the figures, but let me share with
you first of all the most important figure which is a headline figure,
and that is that crime doubled under the Conservatives, convictions fell
by a third, crime has fallen
HUMPHRYS: No, well, come on.....
BOATENG: Let me just finish. This
is a British Crime Survey. Crime has fallen....
HUMPHRYS: I want your record, not
the Tories by the way, that's the important bit.
BOATENG: Crime has fallen by ten
per cent since we came into office and we now have the lowest figures on
burglary and vehicle crime for a decade.
HUMPHRYS: Alright, let me...
BOATENG: Now, that's the record
John...
HUMPHRYS: Alright, now let me deal
with it.
BOATENG: And I'm entitled to feel
proud, proud but not complacent.
HUMPHRYS: Alright, let me ..
BOATENG: .....important plan.
HUMPHRYS: Alright, let me deal
with that record. Crime has, as you know, been falling generally. General
crime has been falling across the industrialised countries, that is the
case, but, but here is the important thing. You talk about the clear-up
rate. Let's look at it, it has fallen, fallen from twenty-eight per cent
in nineteen-ninety-seven which is when you came into power to twenty-five
per cent last year. It has fallen under your watch, not improved.
BOATENG: No, because...
HUMPHRYS: Well, I'm sorry, those
are the official figures, they are your Home Office figures. You can't
say no to them.
BOATENG: I, I hear those figures.
Those figures don't tell the whole story, those figures don't reflect what
the British Crime Survey shows.
HUMPHRYS: No, the British Crime
Survey does not deal (INTERRUPTION) No, no, I've got to let you finish
there because I think that's misleading. You see the British Crime Survey
figures don't deal with clear-up rates. The British Crime Survey figures
as you and I both know very well, deal with crimes that have been reported
one way or the other, so let's not confuse two things.
BOATENG: And I'm not confusing....
HUMPHRYS: I'm willing to trace
this issue with you. I think it's probably tedious for the audience, but
none the less.
BOATENG: Let's not do it.
HUMPHRYS: Well, let's stick to
the figures that we...
BOATENG: I want to address those
statistics you see, because what the British Crime Survey does tell you,
and what you yourself know to be the case, that if you take an offence
like domestic violence, I happen to be the minister responsible for domestic...
HUMPHRYS: You're picking out...I
want to stick to the broad categories.
BOATENG: I'm sure you do but I
have to demonstrate , I have to demonstrate to you what contributes to
those figures. We are actually encouraging people to come forward and
to report domestic violence. We're encouraging people to come forward
and to report racial attacks. Those figures include all of those categories
HUMPHRYS: ...then. Violent crime,
the clear-up rate has fallen again?
BOATENG: Let me just finish What
those figures also demonstrate is that when you take specific offences
like burglary, when you take specific offences like motor vehicle crime
in all of that police performance, the performance of the Criminal Justice
System as a whole has improved, but there is still room for improvement,
which is why..
HUMPHRYS: It is getting worse you
see, it is getting worse.
BOATENG: Which is why John yesterday,
I give you this as an example, we launched on the back of amendments that
were tabled on Friday, new powers for the police to retain DNA samples
lawfully taken, because we know that the billion pounds that we are investing
in new technology, in new approaches to detection are what the police want...
HUMPHRYS: ....... you see..
BOATENG: What the last Conservative
administration failed to address and what we are doing, what we are doing
against a back-cloth in which Home Office statisticians predicted that
crime would rise, it's not actually, it isn't, Oh yes sure, it isn't true
to say that you can take a falling crime for granted. You have to work,
you have to work in order to achieve that, and we owe a great deal to our
police, to our probation services, to those engaged in the hard day to
day business of public protection, and also to the community who with the
Crime and Disorder Act have come together with the police for the first
time - let me finish, for the first time in targeted police initiatives
that have actually reduced burglary and vehicle crime and that have seen
...
HUMPHRYS: Okay.
BOATENG: ... ever reducing increases
in crimes of violence.
HUMPHRYS: Crimes of violence,
I wanted to get onto crimes of violence...
BOATENG: ...so do I..
HUMPHRYS: ..because there are two
areas here that matter. One is the actual number of crimes of violence
the other is the clear up rate. Clear up rate has fallen even more than
for other crimes. It has fallen from seventy-eight per cent to sixty-three
per cent under your watch, violent crime last year was up eight per cent,
in 1998-99 six per cent for robbery, '97-98 sixty three thousand, last
year ninety thousand. Now, look at those figures, they are serious figures,
they are worrying figures, you are telling me things are getting better,
those are the crimes that people most care about, they have gone up and
the people who committed those crimes, fewer of them have been arrested.
That's the reality.
BOATENG: That is precisely why
we are spending two hundred and twenty million pounds of tax payers' money
in relation to work on drugs and their impact on the criminal justice system.
That's precisely why the targeted policing initiative and the additional
resources we have made available to the police and the probation services
have been specifically targeted on crimes of violence but only on robbery,
fuelling and drugs fuelled acquisitive crime. But also on the sort of offences
that are committed as you know John, of a Friday and Saturday night by
drunken yobs out there on the streets..
HUMPHRYS: ..which have increased
since you've been in power.
BOATENG: Well you know, this is...
HUMPHRYS: I just want you to acknowledge
that, that's all.
BOATENG: Sure, but look. I do acknowledge
it John and hold on John, I acknowledge it but what I also acknowledge
is the steps that we are now taking in order to address the yob culture
and I would ask you to give credit for that and I would also ask you to
bear in mind the importance of ensuring as a society when we deal with
issues around youth crime, drink and drugs, that this is something that
can't be left to the police alone. It can't be left to the government alone,
this is an issue of the balance of rights and responsibilities which we
are addressing in terms of the steps we have taken in for instance in relation
to licensing laws, actually giving local authorities and the police the
powers now to close down pubs which are associated with violent crime on
a Friday or Saturday night. All of those are practical, positive measures
that haven't been taken in the past John and that this government is now
taking.
HUMPHRYS: Well let's move forward
then and look to what you might or might not be doing. Sentencing is something
that concerns people enormously. People want - we are told - want to see
the tougher criminals spending more time in jail. The memo that you dismissed
but nonetheless I am going to refer to because it's there, it's on the
record, it's only a couple of weeks' old..
BOATENG: It's in the Sunday Times
John.
HUMPHRYS: But you're not disputing
it's been written by Mr Straw's own advisor, the man he appointed to advise
BOATENG: (laughter)...come off...
HUMPHRYS: ...I'm not coming off
at all, it's a very significant memo...
BOATENG: ..this is an extremely
dubious...
HUMPHRYS: If I had a pound for
every Minister you sat there saying hold those memos...I'd be a very rich
man indeed. The next day of course everybody...
BOATENG: You're not doing too bad
John.
HUMPHRYS: The memo tells us that
you are going..let's just deal with this then, this specific. You are going
to release criminals earlier than they are being released at the moment,
is that true? Let's deal with that.
BOATENG: Look, John, it's not true.
We have set in place and indeed the Crime Plan will explore this tomorrow
and I'm not going to relieve its contents. We have set in place the process
of reviewing sentencing, why have we done that, because the 1991 Act which
the Conservative Government introduced, that is part of their record, the
record of crime doubling and convictions falling by a third. The 1991 Act
led to a situation in which sentences were high-bound, they were subject
to an inflexible regime that for instance didn't enable them to take into
account, as they had done, previous convictions. When you link that to
the botched introduction of the Crown Prosecution Service which we are
also reforming, twenty-three per cent increase next year in their spending,
an increase in the number of Crown Prosecutors, Crown Prosecution Service
and police areas now realigned, Chief Prosecutors. All those things very
necessary. But when you look at the impact of the 1991 Act on sentencing,
what it led to was a situation in which we weren't imprisoning as many
people as we ought to from that hard core of a hundred thousand persistent
offenders. When they were imprisoned for short periods, they were let out
at the half way stage without in fact adequate input into the causes of
their offending addressed by offending behaviour treatment within prison.
They then re-offended, eighty per cent, eighty per cent of that particular
cohort are of criminals, whether they are sentenced to prison or community
sentences, re-offend within two years. So what we are proposing, what we
are proposing is to ensure that those people who do commit offences persistently
are caught, sent to prison, if necessary sent to prison for longer, but
that all people who are sent to prison are actually subject to rigorous
monitoring when they leave prison. So far from this being a soft option
for the criminal, it will be much harder and it will engage sentences with
the outcome of their sentences. That's what they welcome, that's what they
want and that's what the review is designed to do.
HUMPHRYS: The trouble is when again
we look at your record we see that more than thirty-thousand people have
been released early from prison, including, including six-thousand who
had been convicted of violent sentences, of violent offences. Now you
may say, oh well, they've been tagged or whatever it is but the fact is
that people look at those figures and they match your rhetoric with the
actual effect of those actions and see a disparity there.
BOATENG: What I am happy to do
is to debate with you the efficacy of the home detention curfew. What
I can tell you about it is, that it is the product of a policy that has
been supported by the all party Home Affairs Select Committee, that is
about the issue of resettling prisoners back into the community under supervision.
HUMPHRYS: Well, why does the memo
talk about it being seen as softening then, you looking soft..
BOATENG: ....and it has a ninety-four
per cent success rate. So the home detention curfew is a good way of rehabilitating
prisoners, is a good way of resettling them...
HUMPHRYS: ...the fact is you are
letting people out of prison earlier. The memo warns that this can be portrayed
as a significant softening of sentencing arrangements.
BOATENG: John, it isn't a question
of looking soft, or looking hard. You know, the last government fell into
that trap, they always talked hard...
HUMPHRYS: ...well you do, all the
time...
BOATENG: ...hold on, let me finish.
They always said that prison worked and then the fact of the matter was
that crime doubled and convictions fell by a third...
HUMPHRYS: ...do you believe prison
doesn't work then?
BOATENG: ...so what we have got
to do is to use an evidence base and to be driven by the evidence, not
by popularity and not by appearing soft or hard, but by the evidence and
what the evidence shows John, is that prisoners are less likely to re-offend
if you do make sure that they are supervised when they leave prison, which
is why we are investing in the probation service, an additional two-hundred-and-thirty
million pounds for them over the next three years.
HUMPHRYS: ...and that..and on the
basis that they - just to elucidate that point, on the basis that they
will be leaving prison earlier - this is what I am trying to get at...
BOATENG: ...no, not on the basis
that they will be leaving prison earlier...
HUMPHRYS: ..because that's what
you have been doing...
BOATENG: ...not on the basis that
they will be leaving prison earlier but on the basis that all prison sentences
ought to carry with them an element of supervision and control when they
come to an end because all the evidence actually demonstrates that that
is more likely to contribute to their not re-offending...
HUMPHRYS: ...so it's not the case...
BOATENG: ...so what the crime plan
will do will be to demonstrate to you our commitment to tackle the issue
of rehabilitation and resettlement which successive governments of all
political complexions have in the past failed to address and those are
issues around drugs and rehabilitation, they are issues around employment
and rehabilitation, housing and rehabilitation, but they are being....but
they're being a payback for that, that is...
HUMPHRYS: ...right, so just a final
quick thought then...
BOATENG: ...accepting tagging,
accepting a greater degree of supervision and control, it's a hard policy...
HUMPHRYS: ...so it is not the case...
BOATENG: ...it isn't a soft one,
but it's evidence based.
HUMPHRYS: It's not going to be
the case then, again as the members suggest, that people who are sent down
for a year can be out in as little as three months. That is not the case
is it?
BOATENG: Well, what you will see
- no it isn't the case as it happens - but what you will see with the
crime plan which the Prime Minister will outline tomorrow, is an evidence
based policy that is designed to bring greater coherence to the Criminal
Justice System that addresses years of neglect and under-resourcing and
that puts it within the context of an evidence based and rigorous framework
that's about prevention, that is about detection, that's about public protection
and rehabilitation. Those are the themes putting victims, witnesses, at
the heart of the Criminal Justice System and delivering on an ever reducing
level of crime. For the first time we have a government that has presided
over a ten per cent reduction in crime in the lifetime of this government,
that's good news compared to the doubling under the Conservatives.
HUMPHRYS: Wish I could challenge
you on that, sadly, no time. Paul Boateng, thank you very much indeed.
BOATENG: My pleasure.
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