A report has just been released by the Centre for Crime Prevention which provides some interesting statistics supporting the notion that our justice system is failing to tackle persistent offenders. A notion that many police bloggers have been singing from the rooftop for years.
For example, their report highlights that in 2011/12, 65% of offenders who had 10 or more previous convictions and who were convicted of a serious offence, received a non custodial sentence. That was 91,032 offenders who should probably have been jailed that were not.
Worse still, for the same period, if we look at offenders with 15 or more previous convictions, 63% of them received a non custodial sentence. That was 68,100 offenders.
Some may try and argue that crime is reducing and so non custodial sentences are working. Other figures show this to be complete nonsense and supports the view of myself and many other bloggers that the number of persistent offenders is an ever growing problem who treat the criminal justice system with contempt.
In 2006/07 there were 81,204 offenders with 15 or more previous convictions. By 2011/12 this had risen to 108,119. For the same period the number of offenders with at least 10 previous convictions rose from 112,956 to 140,196.
In other figures, the Home Office has admitted that the police are now fighting more than 7500 criminal gangs consisting of more than 30,000 offenders. This figure is a tenfold increase on the estimated figures of ten years ago.
Part of this problem has been brought about by immigration policy. A significant part of the problem is the ever growing 'underclass' whom I have previously discussed at length. The most significant part of the problem is the complete failure of our justice system to deal with persistent offenders effectively. They just keep on offending. The police are obviously catching thousands of them every year but they walk out the door of the court to carry on offending.
One of David Cameron's advisers, MP Claire Perry, made comments in an interview with the Spectator recently mentioning the problem of 'feckless heterosexuals' having lots of children and dads not being involved in their lives. (Her comment is near the bottom of the link in the third to last paragraph in italics) These days you have to be a brave politician to even say such a thing. Unfortunately, we just seem to have become too liberal to actually address the problem.
