Link to this page: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/481/2257
From The Socialist newspaper, 4 April 2007
Blair's crime review
No solutions to crime or crowded prisons
TONY BLAIR has had 53 'law and order' bills passed in ten years at number ten, but still thinks he isn't being tough enough on crime yet. New Labour's latest crime review includes extending 'early intervention' to monitoring all children to examine their 'risk' of criminality.
Iain Dalton
'Summary justice', ie 'on the spot' fines, would be extended as would fixed penalty notices and ASBOs, which lack even the limited accountability of the undemocratic judiciary. The review also wants to increase police DNA databases to all suspects they come into contact with.
So it is more of the same authoritarian policy we have come to expect. Blair also decided that "the pace of public service reform in criminal justice needed to match that in health and education" (the guardian, 28 March) and is proposing 'workforce reform' (read privatisation) of court, probation and prison staff and the introduction of league tables for courts (which already exist for prisons).
Such proposals show New Labour have no real solutions to the record prison population announced last week and the gun and knife crime in the headlines recently. Not that the other capitalist parties have solutions. The Tories decry the logical conclusions of some of the policies they first put into practice during their 18-year rule while the Lib-Dems claim that Blair has adopted some of their policies.
In the guardian on the same day as the crime review, an article on Britain's high levels of poverty, low pay, youth unemployment and McJobs showed that life is bleak for young people.
Although there is no simple relationship between crime and poverty, the two are intimately associated with each other and are rooted in the exploitative capitalist system. We can win higher pay, better working conditions and other reforms under capitalism, but we need a socialist world to make these problems a thing of the past.
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In The Socialist 4 April 2007:
Children suffer in low pay Britain
Socialist Party editorial
Iran - Sailors fall victim to imperialist policies
Socialist Party news and analysis
Blair: No solutions to crime or crowded prisons
Waltham Forest protest - more memorable than Prince Charles!
Commemorating the abolition of the slave trade
Socialist Party reviews
Education
Take national action to defend education
Labour's market policies damage education
Privilege and privation in our schools
NUS leadership abandon fees fight
PCS takes industrial action
London strikers close passport office
PCS members take industrial action
Campaign for a New Workers Party
How to stop the BNP: Build a political alternative
Campaign for a New Workers' Party
Socialist Party NHS campaign
Ammanford home care workers march
Asylum
Leicester protesters challenge Home Office
Workplace news and analysis
Trade union leaders heckled over inaction
Action needed as Ford bosses close Leamington plant
Greenwich: "We've got to strike"
Burslem postal workers strike again
Northern Ireland
British government and local parties retreat on water charges
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