Labour's 'votes for paedophiles' leaflet sparks row

A Labour candidate is embroiled in a row with the Liberal Democrats after suggesting they would give convicted murderers and paedophiles the vote.

Roger Godsiff, who is standing in Birmingham Hall Green, issued leaflets showing nursery worker Vanessa George, who was jailed for abusing children.

He defended the move, saying his opponents were evading scrutiny, but Labour have now scrapped the leaflet.

The Lib Dems said they would not give those currently in prison the vote.

However, they stressed the issue needed to be looked at following a 2005 ruling by the European Court of Rights that found the UK's ban on extending the vote to convicted prisoners was unlawful

Ministers have been consulting on how to respond to the ruling since then with critics accusing them of kicking the issue into the long grass.

High-profile cases

Leaflets distributed under Mr Godsiff's name asked: "Do you want convicted murderers, rapists and paedophiles to be given the vote? The Lib Dems do".

The leaflets contained pictures of a number of high-profile criminals including Vanessa George and Steven Wright, convicted in 2008 for the murder of five women in the Ipswich area.

“ As soon as it came to my attention I immediately ensured that no more of these would be distributed ”
Ray Collins, general secretary of the Labour Party

Mr Godsiff defended the campaign tactic, saying the Lib Dems' policy on the issue was "black and white" but they were not making that clear to voters.

"I agree that the imagery is strong but I do not accept that it is any stronger than anything that has been put out by my opponents," Mr Godsiff told the BBC.

"The leaflet has been distributed in certain areas but it does not contain anything that is factually incorrect. I have put out some negative campaigning when my opponents do not tell the electorate what their position is.

"It is right and proper to ask whether they support or do not support whether people convicted of serious crimes can vote. I have invited other candidates to make their position clear....I have made my position clear."

'Legal minefield'

Asked whether he had personally sanctioned the leaflets, he said he would not discuss the "mechanics" of his campaign but accused the Lib Dems of lying about his policies and voting record.

However, Labour have acted to defuse the row, saying the leaflet was not approved at a national level.

"This was a locally produced leaflet," Ray Collins, the party's general secretary, said. "As soon as it came to my attention I immediately ensured that no more of these would be distributed."

The Lib Dems said they were "unhappy" with the claims and did not favour any attempt to give already convicted prisoners the vote, describing such a step as a "legal minefield".

But, in future, they said judges should be given discretion to decide, upon sentencing, whether to strip someone of the vote, depending on the length of sentence and the nature of the crime.

Once a new system was in place, they said existing prisoners should be given the right to launch an appeal to try and secure the vote.

However, they insisted that those guilty of the most serious crime should never be able to do this.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8630001.stm
Published: 2010/04/19

ASBO ‘BREACH’ CHILDREN SET UP TO FAIL

Agencies dealing with children and young people in breach of bail conditions, criminal justice orders (CJOs) and anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) need to strike a balance between enforcement and support to improve outcomes for young offenders and reduce re-offending, according to a new NCB report ‘Children and young people in ‘breach’: A scoping report on policy and practice in the enforcement of criminal justice and anti-social behaviour orders’.

The report contains the initial findings from a project to increase understanding of policy and practice in breach proceedings, particularly focusing on children and young people who are in custody as a result of breach. Recent years have seen an increasing number of young people incarcerated for breach, including cases whereby no criminal offence was committed in the first instance.

It questions whether intervention by anti-social behaviour units is too adult focused so that the conditions attached to ASBOs are unachievable for many young people. In contrast, recent youth justice appears to be trying to move towards a more flexible and child centred approach. The report suggests that communication may be weak between different agencies, young people and their legal representatives, with young people not always understanding the conditions of their order or the consequences of non-compliance.

Di Hart, author of the report and Principal Officer of Youth Justice and Welfare at NCB says, ‘We must remember that young offenders are children first and offenders second. This is not to suggest that young offenders shouldn’t be held to account for their actions, but that the practitioners that work with them should accept responsibility for ensuring their conditions are reasonable and that they understand them in full. Communication, intensive intervention and tailored support are key ingredients in assisting children and young people who are often from difficult and chaotic homes to complete their orders rather than relying on a punitive approach alone.’

www.ncb.org.uk

The Fear Factory – the work continues

All may have gone quiet on the blog but we’ve been very busy behind the scenes. On the strength of the film, almost 50 national organisations joining the coalition, fantastic press and unprecedented support from key stakeholders, the Nationwide Foundation have very kindly agreed to fund the future work of The Fear Factory as we campaign for:

A cross-party commitment to creating and implementing an effective, long term Criminal Justice strategy based on evidence.

An "Amnesty" on the "arms race" - ending policies driven by short-term political gain, media sensationalism and "tough-talk".

Britain has one of the highest incarceration rates in Western Europe and though supposedly only used as a last resort and to house those most dangerous offenders, the UK incarcerates more children than most other western countries – currently over 2,500 children are in jail.

As the media decries the youth of today and the spectre of ‘broken Britain’ raises it’s ugly head, politicians knee-jerk to each story of violent youth, conveniently ignoring that at the heart of the issue are some of the most vulnerable children and young people who have been failed by social services and failed by us.

Conditions in custody are regularly criticised by independent inspectors, including the over-use of physical force and deliberate infliction of pain, strip-searching and segregation. The majority of young people are criminalised for minor and petty offences, but set on the trajectory to crime by the system itself. Growing up under these conditions it is no surprise that the re-offending rate is well over 75%. The system isn’t working, and at £170,000 for each new prison place it is a very expensive way of ensuring our young people become more damaged thereby opening society up to a very real risk of crime.

30% of children in custody have been in care, three quarters of the prison population suffer from at least two diagnosable mental health disorders and learning disabilities and difficulties are rife. In 1910 the then Home Secretary, Winston Churchill said that the civilisation of a society can be judged by the way it treats its prisoners. When those prisoners are our children and prison takes the place of a failing social services, it is imperative that society takes a serious look at the legacy we are building before it’s too late and Britain ‘grows’ the largest adult prison population in Europe.

If you haven’t seen the film yet, the DVD is available for purchase at: http://www.spiritlevelfilm.com/the-fear-factory.html/

We also have a public screening at The Frontline Club on 22nd April at the Frontline Club: http://frontlineclub.com/events/2010/04/uk-premiere-screening---fear-factor.html.

Two screenings as part of the London Independent Film festival on the 18th and 19th April, tickets available here: http://www.londonindependent.org/tickets.htm.

I’ll bring you more news soon but in the meantime, check out the New Statesman for news on The Tories’ shocking new crime leaflet - evidence of business as usual for the Fear Factory:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/04/crime-leaflet-tories.

Solving the prisoner’s dilemma

With the glimmering colourful lights and the smell of popcorn, the Empire at Leicester square seems an unlikely place for serious discussion on public policy. Yet it may be the starting point for an important movement to change public perceptions and the politics of youth justice.

Yesterday about 400 people were gathered at the Empire for the first screening of the documentary The Fear Factory. The film powerfully described how the fear of crime is maintained by sensationalist media coverage and the cynical tactics of political parties. This has lead to harsher and more punitive responses to youth crime, which in many cases do little more than entrench the criminal behaviour. The documentary, produced by Spirit Level Films, is connected with a campaign for a criminal justice policy that is more humane and long-term in its perspective – and ultimately better at delivering safety for our neighbourhoods. nef’s latest report Punishing Costs was launched in connection with the screening.

With interviews from key experts and practitioners, the documentary shows how the public’s beliefs about the risk of becoming a victim and the general trends in the amount of crime were far from reality and all evidence. Britain has become a safer place in the past two decades – yet the fear of crime remains stubbornly high.

Unfortunately, it is perceptions that drive politics. One of the safest political strategies in the recent past has been to promise to crack down misbehaving youth and to hit them where it hurts. The Fear Factory documents how any deviation from this pattern is quickly struck down, as happened to Cameron when he suggested understanding the social causes of crime. The film also points an accusing finger at the media that gives disproportionate attention to violent cases and misrepresents sentencing as more lenient than it is in truth.

This reaction may actually create the monster that it so much fears. In the climate of alarm about youth crime, the imprisonment of children and young people has remained on very high levels. Prison as an intervention is incapable of dealing with the real causes of crime, and does little more than temporarily isolates an individual from contact with society. About three in four young people released from prison return to crime within a single year.

At the same time custody uses up massive amounts of resources that could have truly improved the safety on our streets. Our report Punishing Costs shows how the full cost of a year-long sentence in prison is £140,000. It is worth pausing to think about what could be achieved if these resources would be put to a positive use.

The screening was followed by an excellent panel that included some prominent criminologists and politicians – and an ex-editor of a tabloid who astonishingly displayed no sense of regret for his past role. Most of the panellist agreed that current policy was too much determined by knee-jerk reactions to high-visibility criminal cases in the media and an arms race between the parties to appear to be the true guardians of law and order.

One of the solutions they proposed by the speakers was to create a cross-party committee for a longer-term vision of developing criminal justice policy that all parties would sign up to. This would curtail the harmful competition between parties, which has led to the current punitive arrangements that hardly anyone believes to be productive or humane. Such a committee, together with a better debate and engagement with the public, is part of the recommendations of Punishing Costs.

Documentaries are powerful tools in transmitting knowledge and awareness of issues. At a time when the media is transmitting a largely false picture and political parties are failing to take the leadership to change perceptions, a film may be exactly the tool that is needed. I hope the Fear Factory, and the coalition forming to campaign around it, receive the attention they deserve.

Aleksi Knuutila
Researcher in the Valuing What Matters programme at nef
Original article: http://neftriplecrunch.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/2088/
nef

The Fear Factory

The “Fear Factory” is a new film about the criminal justice system. Watch the trailer or find out more here.

On releasing “The Fear Factory” at a closed screening in Central London last week, the Bulger case was history – the hair-trigger cause of the youth justice crisis which the film shows unfolding over the past two decades. This weeks events have shown it’s more real, more relevant than ever – and more worryingly, that we’ve learnt little from the past.

Despite knowing full well that a punitive climate, stoked by a distorted fear of crime has lead to a doubling of our prison population and rates of re-offending as high as 90%, our educated friends in Westminster have done nothing to change this. So why not? Could it be because fear actually helps them… ?

In the 1990’s law and order burst onto the political agenda as way to grab votes and Michael Howard, home secretary when Bulger’s killers were sentenced, led the way – bending to public and tabloid pressure and extending the killers sentences. A canny Blair, realised that crime, and especially youth crime was a big winner with the red tops and if he was going to win the election he needed them on-side.

The Sun’s then Executive Editor told us in a cringe-worthy moment for anyone who bought Blair’s hype at the time:

He ran, “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” past me and asked “do you think the press will go for this one?

They did; In a big way, and NuLabour™, took Howard’s precedent to the max. For example our exec editor at the Sun wrote a leader saying yobs should be frogmarched to cashpoint machines and within a week it was Labour policy. Some 4,300 new criminal offences have been introduced in the last decade and today we’re paying the price. It costs up to £250,000 to keep a young offender in custody and as few as 10% stay on the straight and narrow when they get out.

Meanwhile, some states in the US are investing heavily in programmes that have now been proven successful at re-habilitating young offenders and scrapped plans to build new prisons. This should make us pause for thought but the re-emergence of Bulger and resultant coverage ahead of a general election doesn’t bode well – both Tories and Labour have pledged to build more prisons and the Ministry of Justice has just signed off on a private sector contract to build and run the first Titan-style prison for young offenders.

Alongside Ministers and MPs in the film we also interviewed victims, young offenders and killers. None of them pulled any punches (probably why broadcasters won’t touch anything but a hacked down version). Off the back of the film, 47 national organisation joined a coalition asking for an end to this ‘arms race on political tough talk’; The Liberal Democrats have pledged not to use fear as an electioneering tool – in stark contrast to the Conservatives and Labour. Maria Eagle MP (Ministry of Justice) refused to make the same pledge at our screening, with Labour’s new advert on crime out – it’s not hard to see why. At least she had the courage to come to the screening, unlike Conservative Shadow Justice Secretary, Dominic Grieve MP, who was conveniently called away at the last minute on a three line whip and unable to defend himself on what many will see as a direct endorsement of Chris Grayling’s “misleading” statements on crime figures.

by Joanna Natasegara and Richard Symons
March 12, 2010 at 8:00 am
Liberal Conspiracy

Do go and comment on their blog:
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/12/the-fear-factory/

Tough on crime? Jail's not the answer

Locking up more people is a populist ploy that doesn't cut crime. We would focus on rigorous community sentences instead

You wouldn't run the NHS without testing the effectiveness of drugs. No sane economist would let you run the economy without elaborate modelling to test fiscal and monetary policies. It should be a given that important matters of public policy are based on evidence and research, rather than political whim. Why, then, is the field of criminal justice uniquely and scandalously divorced from this obvious rule?

In no other area of public policy are politicians as ready and willing to play to the public gallery as on crime. Since Tony Blair became shadow home secretary in 1992, Labour's approach to law and order has been to try to out-Tory the Tories in being seen as tough on crime. The Tories were only too willing to prey on people's fear of crime and enter into a sentencing arms race conducted in the pages of tabloid newspapers. Both sides continue to try to frighten the public into the arms of their party. It is this politics of fear that has created the dismal bidding war between politicians and the press on crime, a loss of faith in the police and judiciary, and the systematic demonisation of young people.

Rabid rhetoric has helped to criminalise a generation of young people. Britain is the sick man of Europe in terms of youth justice. We have the lowest age of criminal responsibility and highest rate of youth imprisonment. In Labour's first decade in power, a million children were convicted of a criminal offence and another million were cautioned. After the ridiculous top-down targets of 2002 (where fining a child for littering or cannabis was given the same points value as solving a murder), the police found children were easy pickings. As a result, the number of children entering the criminal justice system rose two and a half times faster than adults.

We now spend 11 times more on locking children up than on projects to stop them sliding into crime in the first place. Yet incarceration just increases the likelihood of turning them into serious adult offenders. There are more people in the colleges of crime we call our prisons than ever before. More places are being built. Sentences are getting longer. But it is not working. Reoffending remains sky-high. Nine out of every 10 young men sentenced to a first short custodial sentence get out of prison and commit more crime. Yet the politics of fear dictates that both the Tories and Labour are pledging to send more people to prison for longer just because it sounds tough. Liberal Democrats would not build more prisons. We are the only party brave enough to suggest that rigorous community sentences are more effective than short prison sentences.

The debate about crime in this country desperately needs to be raised above the populist pandering of what sounds "tough". It needs to be about what actually works to cut crime. Labour and the Tories would like you to think that locking people up has led to less crime. The evidence suggests otherwise. We have the second highest crime rate in Europe (after Sweden) and yet the highest rate of incarceration (except for Luxembourg). Other countries, such as Denmark, have managed to take advantage of falling crime rates to reduce their prison populations. Yet Labour and the Tories remain wedded to multi-billion pound plans to lock more people up.

The Liberal Democrats will not peddle the politics of fear. This is the promise we will make to voters in the run up to the election. This is the promise my colleague David Howarth made this week at the screening of the new film the Fear Factory (see you see a trailer here), which exposes our criminal justice crisis with forensic precision. It is a promise Maria Eagle refused to make because she knew Labour colleagues could not and would not keep it. The Conservative party was so scared of the question that Dominic Grieve dodged it by refusing to turn up. They both remain as committed to the law and order arms race as ever.

Instead of posturing on penalties, the Liberal Democrats will focus on proven methods of catching criminals and cutting crime. We will put criminal justice on an evidence-based footing by establishing a National Crime Reduction Agency to test properly what cuts crime. It will do for policing and criminal justice policy what the National Institute for Clinical Excellence does for the health service. We need all the evidence we can get if we are to get other politicians and the media to concentrate on what works rather than what scares.

Chris Huhne
guardian.co.uk
Sunday 7 March 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/07/liberal-democrats-criminal-justice

Deaths of children and young people in penal custody

INQUEST has been working to identify trends and issues emerging from the issue of deaths of children and young people in custody since 1990. We have also been concerned with the effectiveness of the state’s investigative processes for identifying and rectifying dangerous practices and procedures in order to ensure that lessons are learned and further fatalities prevented. We have worked on many child death cases, produced numerous documents on the issue and published a detailed analysis in the book In the Care of the State? Child deaths in Penal Custody in England and Wales by Barry Goldson and Deborah Coles (INQUEST 2005). It concluded that children should not be imprisoned save for in child-centred Local Authority Secure Children’s Homes.

Since January 2000 126 young people aged 18-21 and children aged 14-17 have died whilst in state custody in prisons, immigration detention centres and secure training centres. 113 of those young people took their own lives, and two died as the result of homicides by other prisoners. This figure includes 12 self-inflicted deaths of children in custody.

Our monitoring of the investigation and inquest process following the deaths of children and young people has revealed consistent and repeated features, illustrating that systemic failings are not being addressed but continue to be reproduced by the practices and processes of child imprisonment. The starting point is the very high levels of children being sentenced or remanded to custody (often at great distances from home) with no consideration by the court as to where the child will be detained. This is resulting in children who are often extremely vulnerable being sent to institutions which do not have the resources, facilities or trained staff to deal with their needs.

Increasing numbers of children and demonstrably vulnerable young people are being detained in manifestly unsafe environments and being subjected to bullying, degrading treatment such as strip-searching, segregation and restraint. This amounts to a failure by the state to fulfil its duty of care towards children in its custody and additionally is a significant and substantial breach of the UK’s international treaty obligations. However, the violation of the rights of this large body of children goes worryingly beyond inhumane and humiliating treatment. It has been proven forensically that it presents a persistent risk of injury, suffering or death to young people detained in child prisons.

The campaign for a public inquiry into the death of 16 year old Joseph Scholes in HMYOI Stoke Heath in 2002 received strong parliamentary support and galvanised both the public and NGOs. Our work on this campaign drew national and international attention to the high number of children and young people dying in the hands of the state. INQUEST also has particular concerns about the high levels of restraint used on children in custody. We produced case briefings on the restraint-related deaths in 2004 of 14 year old Adam Rickwood, who took his own life in Hassockfield Secure Training Centre shortly after being restrained by staff, and of 15 year old Gareth Myatt who was killed in Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre after being asphyxiated by three custody officers who restrained him after an incident following his refusal to clean a toaster. Our work with the families and their legal team was critical in exposing the dangerous and unlawful use of restraint. In 2007, we also campaigned successfully with the NSPCC and the Child Rights Alliance for England to end the use of pain compliance restraint techniques against children in custody.

Most recently an inquest concluded into the death of 15 year old Liam McManus who was found hanging in his cell in Lancaster Farms Young Offender Institution in 2007, the thirtieth child to die in state custody since 1990. The jury returned a six-page narrative verdict which criticised the YOI, social services and the Youth Justice Board's systemic failings of a seriously damaged young boy. It is deeply shocking that such failings across several agencies responsible for Liam's care were highlighted once again, despite all the previous inquests into deaths of children.

What the inquests held into the deaths of children and young people have uncovered is that the juvenile justice system needs urgent and profound public scrutiny, investigation and review, significantly wider in scope than the inquest process permits. It is essential for there to be a properly-resourced, transparent and critical analysis of the defects of the custodial treatment of children and young people in the form of a public inquiry in order to ensure that the deaths of the children of the families who we support are not to be entirely in vain.

Deborah Coles,
Co-Director
INQUEST