Crime + Justice (Police/Prisons), Civil Liberties and Law (Drugs)

Crime + Justice

  • Targeted investment in the National Crime Agency and in a new Online Crime Agency to ensure that our approach to tackling crime is fit for the twenty-first century. 

  • Tackle the rise in hate crimes by making them all aggravated offences, giving law enforcement the resources and training they need to identify and prevent them, and condemning inflammatory rhetoric – including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia – by those with public platforms.

  • Provide funding for protective security measures to places of worship, schools and community centres that are vulnerable to hate crime and terror attacks.

  • Utilising the experience, knowledge and innovation of the third sector and creating a more joined-up, innovative approach towards service delivery with regards to tackling the causes of crime. 

  • Reform criminal record disclosure rules so that people do not have to declare irrelevant old and minor convictions, and remove questions about criminal convictions from initial application forms for all public-sector jobs.

  • Establish a Women’s Justice Board and provide specialist training for all staff in contact with women in the criminal justice system. 

  • Adopting a public health approach to serious violence: restoring community policing and youth services and supporting them to work together with other services to reverse the spread of violence.

  • Adopt a public health approach to the epidemic of youth violence: identifying risk factors and treating them, rather than just focusing on the symptoms. This means police, teachers, health professionals, youth workers and social services all working closely together to prevent young people falling prey to gangs and violence

  • Set the minimum age at which someone can be charged for a crime to 12: 
    • Youth Detention Centres will house inmates from the age of 12 to 18 before those inmates will then be sent onto an adult prison.

  • Restore 162 closed magistrate’s courts to speed up justice. 

Policing 

  • Police and Crime commissioners replaced by accountable Police Boards made up of elected county councillors. 

  • Increase the number of community police officers by 20,000 (a minimum of two new police officers in every ward). 

  • End the disproportionate use of Stop and Search. 

  • Create an Independent Police Accountability Board in order to investigate breaches of misconduct. 

  • All police must wear body cameras. 

  • Greater emphasis on Cybercrime & fraud detection. 

  • Create a new Online Crime Agency to effectively tackle illegal content and activity online, such as personal fraud, revenge porn and threats and incitement to violence on social media. 

  • Immediately halt the use of facial recognition surveillance by the police. 

  • Fully fund an immediate ten per cent pay-rise for all police officers to support recruitment and retention, and future pay rises in line with recommendations from the Independent Police Remuneration Review Body. 

  • Introduce a target of one hour for handover of people suffering from mental health crisis from police to mental health services and support the police to achieve adequate levels of training in mental health response.  

Prisons 

  • Adopt a Norwegian approach to reforming prisons. 

  • Recruit 2,500 more prison officers and improve the provision of training, education and work opportunities.

  • An effective and well resourced after-care service is at least as important in the prevention of reoffending as work done within a well ordered prison.

  • All prisons should be publicly run but we see merit in private and voluntary sector providers delivering education, rehabilitation, and training within the prison establishment.

  • Before prison sentences are handed out, people must be given a full mental health check by a psychologist. 

  • Reduce the number of people unnecessarily in prison, including by: introducing a presumption against short prison sentences; ending prison sentences for the possession of drugs for personal use; and increasing the use of tough community sentences and restorative justice where appropriate. 

  • Use community service more extensively for minor crimes thus reducing the unnecessary pressure on prisons. 

  • Ensure that all prison-leavers have a suitably timed release and are supported with suitable accommodation, a bank account and employment or training, and are registered with a local GP. 

  • Improve mental health support and treatment within the criminal justice system and ensure continuity of mental health care and addiction treatment in prison and the community. 

  • Improve and properly fund the supervision of offenders in the community, with far greater coordination between the prison service, probation service providers, the voluntary and private sectors and local government, achieving savings in the high costs of reoffending. 

Civil Liberties 

  • No to any form of mandatory ID cards with the exception: 
    • People who don’t hold a Passport or indeed a Provisional/Full Driving Licence, they would then apply voluntarily for a government backed Digital ID card, free of charge. 

  • Opposition to censorship of any kind unless it incites hatred, violence or espouses explicit material. 

  • Protection of Free Speech: 
    • Free Speech is fundamental in a democratic society. The free exchange of ideas and opinions allows these ideas and opinions to be tested. In addition, the party also concedes that with rights subsequently comes responsibilities and as such accepts that exercising one’s right to free speech might come at a cost. 

  • A new Bill of Rights to replace the European Convention of Human Rights, The Human Rights Act 1998, Equality Act 2010. 

  • Denationalise the term marriage and thus allow individuals to define it for themselves regardless of sexual orientation: 
    • Scrap the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act 2013 

  • Protect internet freedom & privacy. 

  • Repeal the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 

  • Repeal the Counter-Terrorism and Borders Security Act 2019 

  • Introduce a right to no-fault divorce. 

  • Introduce a Lovelace Code of Ethics to govern the use of personal data and artificial intelligence to ensure it is unbiased, transparent, accurate and respects privacy. 

Law 

  • Establish a new right to affordable, reasonable legal assistance, and invest £1 billion to restore Legal Aid, making the system simpler and fairer. 

  • Scrap the Vagrancy Act, so that rough sleeping is no longer criminalised.

  • Ban conversion therapy.  

  • Decriminalize prostitution to increase worker safety. 

  • Decriminalise abortion across the United Kingdom through to 24 weeks: 
    • Must have the approval of two doctors and a psychologist. 
    • Abortions will be permissible in cases where the pregnancy was the result of rape, is a threat to the life or health of the woman, incest; however, would not be permissible in cases of foetal abnormality. 
    • Must be over the age of 18 (unless the individual has parental consent). 

  • Opposition to the introduction of religious laws for religious minorities in any capacity, such as Canon Law. 

  • Legislating for a statutory definition of domestic abuse that includes its effects on children. 

  • Extend limited legal rights to cohabiting couples, for example, to give them greater protection in the event of separation or a partner’s death. 

  • Legislation of Euthanasia and Assisted Dying: 
    • Must be at least 18 years old and mentally competent: this means being capable of making health care decisions for yourself.
    • Must have the approval of two doctors and a psychologist. 
    • Have a terminal illness.

  • Extend Freedom of Information laws to cover private companies delivering public services. 

Drugs 

  • Reform drug laws comparable to Portugal; decriminalisation of Cannabis for both personal and medicinal use:
    • Introduce limits on the potency levels and permit cannabis to be sold through licensed outlets to adults over the age of 18.

  • Divert people arrested for possession of drugs for personal use into treatment, and imposing civil penalties rather than imprisonment. 

  • Repeal the misuse of Drugs Act 1971: 
    • Pursue different legal regulatory models for different substances according to which Class they fall under. 

  • Implement a national education programme strategy by providing schools with effective education on the misuse of drugs. In addition, the program will aim to manage drug related issues and incidents within schools. 

  • Enable the establishment of overdose prevention centres across England, including establishing a licensing framework for centres, in order to prevent death due to drug overdose. 

  • Move departmental responsibility for Drugs from the Home Office to the Department of Health and Social Care. 

  • Provide heroin-assisted treatment where this is judged to be the safest and most effective option. 

  • Take effective UK-wide action to tackle drug importation, production and supply, with overseas action where necessary, and take firm action to prosecute domestic drug importation, production and supply: 
    • Increase the maximum prison sentence for production of Class A from the current 14 years to at least 25 years, an unlimited fine or both. 
    • Increase the maximum prison sentence for production of Class B from the current 14 years to at least 25 years, an unlimited fine or both. 
    • Increase the maximum prison sentence for production of Class C from the current 14 years to at least 20 years, an unlimited fine or both. 

  • Recognise that a large percentage of the current prison population have addiction problems and institute a step-change treatment of their addiction prior to release. 

  • Additional action to address neonatal abstinence syndrome through support for expectant mothers.