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Jack Straw: accused of ignoring "rich" crimes to focus on "poor" ones
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Straw Criticised for Hitting the Weak
A report by the Child Poverty Action Group accuses Home Secretary Jack Straw of hitting at society's most vulnerable groups with his "zero tolerance" policy for minor street offences.
According to the report, published on Monday, a disproportionate level of resources is devoted to fighting street crime and benefit fraud compared with corporate crime. As a result, poorer criminals are being targeted at the expense of wealthier, white collar villains.
The report says: "Put simply, zero tolerance is not a policy applied to the crimes of the respectable or the rich - it is directed only to vulnerable and visible targets."
While policing strategy and political attention concentrates largely on "poor crime", many of the most costly and serious offences are actually committed by "the rich", the report adds. It goes on to argue that: "The response of the criminal justice system reflects this balance of priorities, resulting in the poor being policed and punished much more than the rich."
The report maintains that white collar or corporate crime - from commercial fraud to health and safety violations - is actually more costly in financial terms and more dangerous. It highlights figures which show that £5.2 billion a year is retrieved by the Inland Revenue from tax compliance work compared with the estimated £1.2
billion saved on benefit fraud.
Yet while the Department of Social Security prosecuted 10,000 alleged
fraudulent claimants, only 192 people were charged by the Inland Revenue for tax offences.
The report's author, Dee Cook, associate dean at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Wolverhampton University, said the figures exemplified the "double standards" in operation.
"Historical myths about the `criminal classes' have been translated into current day attitudes towards lone mothers, people living on `sink' estates, black youth, asylum seekers and homeless people," Ms Cook said.
"In an increasingly divided society there has been an intensified policing and punishment of poorer individuals and communities. The poor are filtered into the criminal justice system while the rich are filtered out."
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