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News Archives: Index

October 7, 2010: Probation Set For Industrial Action

October 5, 2010: Turning Prisoners Into Taxpayers

October 4, 2010: Murder Changes Now In Force

September 20, 2010: Probation Programmes Face Cuts

August 24, 2010: Victorian Poor Law Records Online

August 10, 2010: Justice Job Cuts

July 28, 2010: Prison Violence Growing

July 22, 2010: Police Numbers: Latest Figures

July 22, 2010: New Jurisdiction Rules

July 16, 2010: CCJS On Prison And Probation Spending Under Labour

July 15, 2010: Latest Statistics On Violent And Sexual Crime

July 15, 2010: Latest National Crime Figures

July 15, 2010: New Chief Prisons Inspector

July 14, 2010: Hard Times Ahead For Prisons: Anne Owers

July 14, 2010: Prison Does Not Work: Ken Clarke

July 13, 2010: Criminal Justice Reform: Sentencing and Rehabilitation

July 13, 2010: Criminal Justice Reform Priorities

July 12, 2010: What Price Public Protection, Asks Probation Chief Inspector

July 12, 2010: NOMS has failed, says Napo

July 10, 2010: IPCC To Investigate Death of Raoul Moat

July 9, 2010: Women In Prison: New Report

July 9, 2009: Unjust Deserts: Imprisonment for Public Protection

July 8, 2010: Police Search Powers Change

July 7, 2010: Make 'Legal High' Illegal, Says ACMD

July 2, 2010: Failing Children In Prison

July 2, 2010: Police Buried Under a Blizzard of Guidance: HMIC

July 1, 2010: Freedom To Change The Law?

June 30, 2010: A New Outlook On Penal Reform?

June 30, 2010: Revolving Door Of Offending Must Stop, Says Clarke

June 30, 2010: Ken Clarke: Speech on Criminal Justice Reform

June 29, 2010: No More Police Targets

June 26, 2010: Family Intervention Projects Questioned

June 25, 2010: Cutting Criminal Justice

June 24, 2010: Napo on Sex Offenders Report

June 23, 2010: Closing Courts: The Cuts Begin

June 23, 2010: Strategy To Tackle Gangs

June 15, 2010: Courts and Mentally Disordered Offenders

June 8, 2010: Working With Muslims in Prison

June 1, 2010: Your Chance To Nominate a QC

June 29, 2010: No More Police Targets

In a speech at the ACPO-APA policing conference, Home Secretary Theresa May announced that the public confidence target and the policing pledge will be scrapped immediately.

There is a sense that targets are simply unsustainable in the face of budget cuts. She told police chief officers that as the national budget shrinks they will have to find ways to do more with less:

 'The spending review has not begun yet, so we don't know the exact figures, but I must be clear. The cuts will be big, they will be tough to achieve, and they will fall on the police as they will on other important public services.'  Crimlinks has published the full speech here.

The Home Secretary said that police forces could save money by cutting bureaucracy and getting more police out on the streets. She would help, she said, by cutting back on central control of police operations and targets, and abolishing time-consuming forms, such as the 'stop and account' form.  She will also get rid of the centrally driven target of 'improving public confidence' and the policing pledge 'with immediate effect':

'Targets don't fight crime; targets hinder the fight against crime. In scrapping the confidence target and the policing pledge, I couldn't be any clearer about your mission: It isn't a 30-point plan. It is to cut crime. No more, and no less.'

For their part, the chief officers will have to cut back significantly on spending as part of the government's overall budget reductions. Red tape eliminated by the Home Office must not be reinstated at a local level, she said.  Chief constables must take a 'radical approach' to cutting bureaucracy.

The Home Secretary vowed that she would be 'ruthless' in cutting waste, streamlining and improving efficiency to make as much money available to the police as possible.

Whatever happens, she said, policing must be visible and available to the public, so police budgets will have to be used cleverly:

 'I am determined that frontline availability should increase, even as budgets contract.'

She said she will examine the entire 'top-down model of accountability imposed on police by central government'; accountability to Whitehall will be replaced by more local control. Therefore, each force should have a directly  elected person setting the force budget, agreeing local strategic targets, handling issues of community safety and appointing local chief constables:

'Our vision is a bold one, with a totally redrawn national policing landscape.'