Top civil servants should be sacked as part of a major crackdown on the £250billion annual cost of crime, a new report has urged.
A study by the think tank Policy Exchange, backed by former home secretary Sir Sajid Javid, proposed dismissing all senior managers in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and HM Prisons and Probation Service (HMPPS), dubbing them ‘simply inadequate’.
It also recommended a major expansion in police numbers, building an extra 53,000 prison cells and introducing a minimum two-year jail term for ‘hyper-prolific offenders’.
There should also be automatic deportation for all foreign offenders, including the immediate removal after conviction for those handed non-custodial sentences, it said.
In a new estimate of the total cost of crime, it put the ‘tangible’ cost of crime at £170billion a year and the total including ‘intangible’ costs, such as fear of crime, at £250billion a year.
Sir Sajid praised the ‘excellent’ report and, in a foreword, wrote: ‘A situation in which people believe that when they report a crime the police will not follow up and the perpetrator will not be brought to justice is not sustainable.
‘Restoring that trust, and the rule of law on which prosperity relies, must be a priority for the government.’
The think tank’s 87-page study said: ‘The quality of personnel in our criminal justice system matters.‘
And the current leadership in both HMPPS and the MoJ in particular is simply not up to the task of the scale of transformation required of the institutions.
A study backed by former cabinet minister Sir Sajid Javid has said that top civil servants should be dismissed in a crackdown on the £250billion annual cost of money
The report suggests all senior managers in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and HM Prisons and Probation Service (HMPPS) should be sacked, deeming them ‘simply inadequate’ (file photo)
‘The Government should replace, in their entirety, the most senior executive managers of the MoJ and HMPPS.‘The incumbents are simply inadequate to the task.
‘None should be promoted or redeployed elsewhere within the civil service. They should be dismissed entirely.
’It calculated that the annual cost of crime amounts to 6.5 per cent of GDP, or £170billion a year, covering ‘tangible’ losses such as stolen items, fraud and criminal damage.
In addition, hidden ‘intangible’ costs – such as ‘altered behaviour because of the fear of crime’ – bring the total up to 10 per cent of GDP or £250billion a year, it said.
The study noted there has been ‘acute growth in a range of highly visible crimes’, including a 51 per cent jump in recorded shoplifting since 2015, while robberies and knife crime have spiralled upwards by 64 per cent and 89 per cent respectively over the same period.
It called for massive cuts of £5billion a year in other types of public spending so cash can be diverted into fighting crime.‘Hyper-prolific’ offenders who have more than 45 previous convictions or cautions should receive a minimum two-year jail term on re-conviction, it added.
Currently, they are jailed for only 26 per cent of the occasions they are convicted in court.
On foreign criminals – who currently make up 12 per cent of the prison population – the report said they should face ‘immediate deportation at the end of their sentence’.
‘For those sentenced to a community order or suspended sentence this deportation should be effective immediately on sentencing,’ it added.
Volunteer police officers, or ‘specials’, should be ‘remodelled entirely as the Reserves Constabulary’ with their number increased ten-fold to around 50,000, the report recommended.
The report said that foreign criminals should be ‘immediate deportation at the end of their sentence’ (file photo)
Chris Philp, Shadow Home Secretary, said: ‘We left office with record number of police officers, having cut crime by 50 per cent in 14 years.
‘But Labour are soft on crime and risk undoing all of our good work. It would serve them well to read this report closely.
‘Police should be spending time catching criminals, not policing Facebook and Twitter.
‘We need to see a zero-tolerance approach to crime, and prolific offenders where they belong – in prison.’
Crime and policing minister Dame Diana Johnson said: ‘In the next decade, this government plans to halve violence against women and girls and knife crime, and restore public confidence in policing and the criminal justice system, as part of the Safer Streets Mission.
‘Through the Plan for Change, we will also bring visible policing back to communities, with 13,000 extra neighbourhood police officers, PCSOs and specials.
‘Alongside this, the government will build 14,000 more prison places by 2031 to lock up dangerous offenders.’
