The last week saw the Liberal Democrats, Conservatives, Greens and Labour publish their 2024 manifestos. With three weeks until the election on July 4, here we review each party’s commitments on policing and criminal justice. 

Liberal Democrats 

By far the most comprehensive justice plans come from the Liberal Democrats, with commitments including:  

• Recruiting and retaining more prison officers. 

• Improving the provision of training, education and work opportunities in prisons. 

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

• Replacing Young Offender Institutions with Secure Schools and Secure Children’s Homes. 

• Ensuring that every prison has a ‘through the gate’ mentorship programme. 

• Introducing a National Resettlement Plan to improve the rehabilitation of people leaving prison and cut reoffending. 

• Improving and properly funding the supervision in the community, with more coordination between prison and probation and the voluntary and private sectors and local authorities. 

Many of these clear commitments have roots in evidence and good practice across the voluntary sector. Clinks member Switchback have called for a National Resettlement Plan, while a Women’s Justice Board was first mooted by the Prison Reform Trust in 2000 and recommended and debated numerous times since then, including in the Lords in 2008. 

The Liberal Democrats have committed to making youth diversion a statutory duty, so every part of the country has a pre-charge diversion scheme for young people up to the age of 25. They also committed to creating a distinct legal jurisdiction in Wales and devolving powers over youth justice, probation services, prisons, and policing to Wales. 

Away from policies directly related to criminal justice, they pledged to reduce the wait for people’s first Universal Credit payment from five weeks to five days, establish a Commissioner for Older People and Ageing, end rough sleeping in the next Parliament through a cross-Whitehall plan to end all forms of homelessness, and implement a comprehensive race equality strategy. All of these policies have the potential to improve the circumstances facing people who are, or who have been, in contact with the criminal justice system, but more details would be needed.   

Conservatives 

The Conservatives go heavy on sentencing – promising to ‘toughen’ sentencing for murders that take place in the context of domestic abuse with new aggravating factors and a new starting point of 25 years. They commit to tougher sentencing for ‘the worst offenders’ – though they don’t specify for which offences - as well as tougher sentences for ‘knife crime, grooming gangs, and assaults against retail workers’. Whole life orders will be made mandatory for ‘more of the most heinous murderers’ while people convicted of rape and serious sexual offences will spend more of their sentence in prison. 

The Conservatives also commit to a review of homicide sentencing, looking to ‘close the loopholes that allow some killers to get off lightly’ - it’s not clear which loopholes this refers to, or how this differs from the commitments to amend starting points for domestic murders. The manifesto also comes out in favour of joint enterprise, the legal doctrine that allows multiple people to be charged for the same crime. Crown Prosecution Service data, published in 2023, showed that black people were 16 times more likely than white people to be prosecuted under joint enterprise and that more than half of those prosecuted were from racially minoritised backgrounds. 

The manifesto includes a plan to introduce an aggravating factor ‘for murders that happen in the context of ‘rough sex’’ and to give the judiciary the power to require offenders to attend sentencing hearings or face an increased sentence (as announced in August 2023). 

Away from sentencing, the Conservatives pledge to recruit an additional 8,000 neighbourhood police officers, including putting an additional neighbourhood police officer in every community across Wales. Additional police officers will inevitably lead to greater numbers of people caught up in the criminal justice system.   

All of these commitments will require an increase in prison capacity, something the Conservatives say they can achieve by building four new prisons by 2030, completing their 2021 promise of 20,000 new prison places. This is already several years overdue, having been promised by the mid-2020s. In June 2023, the government admitted that, even if all planned capacity was delivered on time, there would still be a shortfall of 2,300 prison places by March 2025. 

They announce that they are planning to toughen up community sentencing, by increasing the use of community payback and electronic tagging.  

The Conservatives also reiterate their commitment to delivering the 10-year drugs strategy to help reduce crime, and support people who are using substances to rebuild their lives.  

The manifesto also commits to publishing the Major Conditions Strategy – the strategic framework was published in August 2023, and the government had already committed to publishing the final strategy in spring 2024.  

Green Party 

The Green Party have acknowledged that they won’t be forming the next government, but present the idea of separating criminal justice and immigration, by replacing the Home Office with a new Department of Migration – it's not clear whether this would mean responsibility for policing would move into the Ministry of Justice.

They would legislate for a presumption against prison sentences of under two years, and improve rehabilitation through investment in prisons and probation. They also float an £11bn investment in legal aid, and a £2.5bn budget to repair and renew 'crumbling courts', alongside recruiting judges, ensuring wider representation.

The Greens also provide some practical solutions to dealing with knife crime - such as providing emergency bleed kits and staff training for night-time venues, and providing more lighting and CCTV to fix ‘blind spots’ in areas of high knife crime.  

Labour 

Knife crime is also a major theme for Labour, who pledge to halve it in a decade, with plans including banning ‘ninja swords, zombie-style blades and machetes’ and strengthening rules to prevent online sales, including holding company executives personally accountable. This echoes plans announced by the government earlier this year and included in the Criminal Justice Bill. Zombie knives were banned in 2016, and cyclone knives were banned in 2019. 

Labour also pledge that every young person caught in possession of a knife will be referred to a Youth Offending Team and will receive a mandatory plan to prevent reoffending, with penalties including curfews, tagging, and prison. On early intervention, Labour say they would create a Young Futures programme – a network of community hubs with youth workers, mental health support workers, and careers advisers to support young people and keep them away from crime. 

Anti-social behaviour is one of Labour's first priorities, and they say they will introduce ‘new powers to ban persistent adult offenders from town centres’, while ‘Fly-tippers and vandals will also be forced to clean up the mess they have created.’ It’s not clear what this might mean in practice. 

Labour commit to the creation of a new specific offence for assaults on shopworkers – a Labour amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill, which fell when Parliament was dissolved. This has the potential to increase the number of people coming into criminal justice system and, as Clinks member Transform Justice point out, is unlikely to protect retail workers from assault. Ministry of Justice data from 2022 shows the creation of the specific offence ‘assault against an emergency worker’ resulted in a higher conviction rate than the comparable non-specific offence of common assault. (89.8% in 2018 and 83.1% in 2019, compared to 70.3% for ‘common assault’ in 2018 and 68.4% in 2019). In the same periods, 28% of ‘assault against an emergency worker’ convictions receiving a custodial sentence compared to 17% ‘common assault’ convictions in 2018.  

Labour also pledge a review of sentencing, and commit to building ‘badly needed’ prisons. On improving outcomes for prison leavers, Labour provide some broad aims – including improving access to purposeful activity and creating pre-release plans, supporting prisons to link up with local employers and the voluntary sector to get people leaving prison into work, and support for children affected by parental imprisonment. These are welcome, but not new, and light on detail and their effectiveness will depend on investment.

Labour commit to conducting a strategic review of probation governance, including considering the benefits of devolved models. Given the huge changes that have been made to probation over the last decade, this pledge is likely to receive a mixed response from the sector. The manifesto does not reference any further investment into probation services. Later on, Labour also commits to considering the devolution of probation and youth justice services to the Welsh Government, with the aim of helping them to become more locally responsive.  

Labour commit to halving violence against women and girls within a decade, by establishing specialist rape and sexual offences teams in every police force, fast tracking rape cases, siting domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms and applying aggressive tactics to prolific perpetrators. They also commit to strengthening Stalking Protection Orders, introduce a new criminal offence of spiking, and to strengthening the protections available to women in co-habiting couples, as well as for whistle blowers in the workplace, including on sexual harassment. We assume that these protections would also be available to male victims of stalking, domestic abuse and sexual violence. 

Other commitments of note include reviewing Universal Credit, reform of the Apprenticeships Levy, and a new cross-government strategy on ending homelessness.

Reform UK

Reform promise that, in the first 100 days, they would 'start building 10,000 new prison places, to be managed by the public sector'. They suggest using disused military bases as sites if needed. 

They commit to an urgent sentencing review, with at least one outcome predetermined - they want people convicted of a second ‘violent or serious’ offence to receive a mandatory life sentence. There is no further definition on violent or serious, but elsewhere they refer to mandatory life sentences for 'drug dealing and trafficking' and a new offence of ‘substantial possession of drugs’ which will result in heavy fines.

Reform advocate for the reintroduction of High Intensity Training Camps to provide young people convicted of offences with a basic education, teamwork, and values. The High Intensity Training programme ran at HMP/YOI Thorn Cross from 1996 and consisted of physically challenging and highly disciplined regimes with well developed programmes addressing offending behaviour and aftercare treatment. Inspections were positive and there was evidence that programme participants took longer to reoffend and committed fewer crimes. The programme no longer runs.

Reform also propose increasing the criminal justice budget by £2 billion, to £12 billion, to ensure there are more ‘high calibre staff’ and to help cut delays, and to deport people convicted of grooming offences who hold dual citizenship. They commit to recruiting 40,000 police officers by the next Parliament, and to phasing out the role of PCSO and substantial increase in the use of stop and search.

Clinks will provide further analysis of these commitments over the next three weeks – and beyond.