UNITED KINGDOM
The United Kingdom Ministry of Justice is to be allocated an additional £2.5 billion ($A4.5 billion) for extra prison places as part of a plan to crackdown on violent crime
Prime Minister, Boris Johnson said the money would be used to create 10,000 extra prisons places because he wanted “criminals to be afraid – not the public”.
He also said the police would be given additional stop-and-search powers.
“The Government has no choice but to insist on tougher sentencing laws for serious sexual and violent offenders, and for those who carry knives,” Mr Johnson said.
He acknowledged that would mean more pressure on UK jails, almost two-thirds of which are currently classed as over-crowded, but said the addition of 10,000 new spaces would address the problem.
The latest annual crime survey for England and Wales shows that there was an eight per cent increase in the number of knife offences recorded by police over the past year, with a three per cent year-on-year rise in firearms incidents.
Knife-related homicides are meanwhile at their highest level since 1946.
Police will be able to make greater use of existing laws which allow officers to search somebody without suspicion if they are in an area where they believe an offence is about occur.
“I know stop-and-search is controversial. I know that left-wing criminologists will object,” Mr Johnson said.
“I also know that the people who back this intervention most fervently are often the parents of the kids who are so tragically foolish as to go out on the streets equipped with a knife, endangering not only the lives of others but their own.”
London, 15 August, 2019
