Repeat offenders

The Prime Minister gave a stirring speech last week in which he outlined the government’s new policy on law and order. The key, he insisted, was to be ‘tough and intelligent’ — which naturally suggested that previous policy had been soft and stupid. The truth, however, is that there is much more continuity between the old policy and the new than David Cameron suggested. One of the ‘new’ policies is ‘two strikes and you’re out’: if you commit two serious violent or sexual offences, you will get an automatic life sentence. Similar regimes have been promised before. Previous Labour governments introduced ‘indeterminate sentences for public protection’ for serious offences. Their point was to ensure that any criminal who was given one would not be released until determined to be ‘safe’ by the probation authorities. Those sentences were often, in effect, life sentences. The coalition abolished them earlier this year, partly because they were blocking up the prisons.