It is crime week for the Labour party. Unfortunate timing really, given one of their former MPs got locked up last week.
Did you read much of that story? Jared O’Mara, the former MP for Sheffield Hallam. Quite incredible.
Drinking binges, late night emails to Theresa May, and five grams of cocaine a day – an intake which was only matched by [REDACTED] [REDACTED] in his prime.
Obviously, getting jailed for fraud was right, but he was also vulnerable – shouldn’t really have been in that position in the first place.
A failure of due diligence. I guess, at the time, no one thought Nick Clegg was beatable in that seat, so it didn’t matter.
Mr O’Mara won though and spent the rest of his tenure in Parliament celebrating.
Anyways, this week is crime week. I always think this is a tricky one for Labour, who never quite hit the heights of “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”.
It’s the second half of that slogan that is the most important, I think.
“Tough on crime” is an easy one. Lock ‘em up, put more bobbies on the beat, and all that. Easy stuff. Red meat.
The causes of crime is the interesting one.
We got told this week, for example, that residents living in areas under Labour police and crime commissioners are 45% more likely to be burgled than under Tory areas.
Yes. Genius. That’s because Labour PCCs tend to look after the bigger cities. Manchester, Liverpool, London, etc.
There is crime in big cities. Lots of it. Always has been, always will be. How we set about tackling it is complex.
Rebuild trust in the police, have a look at whether prison works (it doesn’t) and start joining up a lot more stuff.
There are some really, really encouraging noises emerging this week.
The usual stuff about trying to reverse Tory cuts, of course, and 13,000 additional neighbourhood police and police community support officers, new legislation, community punishments for antisocial behaviour.
But there’s some techy stuff as well that, if they are serious about, will be interesting to watch.
In a speech in London, Shadow Justice Secretary Steve Reed talked about trauma and how it affects crime: “We know that severe trauma damages a child’s cognitive and emotional development so they can end up with a warped sense of right and wrong.
"The next Labour government will harness this learning to shape the world’s first trauma-informed criminal justice system.
“That means tackling trauma early in life, in courts, in prisons, in probation services.”
That’s the first time in a long-time anyone has said anything remotely interesting – and remotely serious – about crime and how to set about dealing with it.
Feels also like the first proper bit of policy we’ve had from Labour in a while. More to follow, apparently.
