General Election 2024 Manifestos: More Police & More Prison
As we approach the July 4th General Election the various parties have published their manifestos. For abolitionists they make bleak reading. All parties are equally committed to the paradigm of criminal justice, most promising a dramatic expansion of police and prison cells, whilst largely ignoring the structural inequalities that characterise our society. More police and austerity are the offer.
To ensure you don’t have to read them – it is a deeply depressive task – I have ploughed through them to produce this brief summary. I have limited myself to the parties standing sufficient candidates to, at least theoretically, win a parliamentary majority. Of the other parties I have not read the manifestos of those standing only in Northern Ireland, the SNP manifesto has not yet been published and Plaid Cymru’s main focus is on transferring (and slightly reducing) criminal justice from London to Wales. In reality the election is a one-horse race, Labour will win, so I have highlighted their offering in more detail. For abolitionist organisers and campaigners Labour offers a disastrous future which will require organised resistance.
Nearly fifty years ago the authors of Policing the Crisis observed that:
‘It is, perhaps, in relation to crime more than in any other single area that the liberal voice is most constrained; that conventional definitions are hardest to resist; that alternative definitions are hardest to come by.’
Crime in general and the fear of crime are staples of TV dramas and manifesto writers. All parties are deeply concerned about crime and committed to fighting it. Across all the parties there is an implicit consensus that crime is bad and getting worse. It is in this context that one sentence in the Conservative manifesto stands out like a sore thumb. ‘Under the Conservatives,’ we are told, ‘violent crime has fallen by 44% since 2010 and neighbourhood crime is down 48%.’ Whilst the construction of crime statistics is highly problematic, there is clear evidence that despite newspaper headlines there is some truth underpinning these claims. But as we get into election fever these are inconvenient truths so rather than celebrate their apparent success the Conservatives swiftly move on to offer their bids in the election “tough on crime” auction. These include 8,000 more police officers, a commitment to ‘back the police’ with new powers whilst simultaneously restoring public trust in them. Longer sentences, new police powers against ‘disruptive’ protests including the criminalisation of wearing face coverings and climbing on war memorials, and increasing prison capacity by 20,000 (including the building of four new prisons) are all promised.
Despite their ambitious bidding in the law-and-order auction the Conservative party looks doomed to a massive defeat, in part by being outflanked on their far right by Reform – The Brexit Party. On criminal justice Reform promises 40,000 new police, the recruitment of ex-military officers to provide the police’s leadership, mandatory life sentences for a range of sentences including ‘dealing’, building 10,000 prison places, the targeting of ‘foreign gangs’ who account for most of the ‘organised crime in the UK’, changing the definition of ‘hate crime’ so it can be used to ‘stop violent, hate demonstrations such as the Free-Palestine marches’, and the introduction of ‘training camps’ for young offenders.
The discourse of law and order can also be found in the manifesto of George Galloway’s Workers Party. They stress that they are ‘determined not to be soft on crime’ and that they are ‘not soft-hearted liberals’. Unlike others parties they don’t provide specific numbers. It combines a workerist perspective – ‘police officers are workers too’ – with a neoliberal critique of the police’s (feeble, tokenistic) attempts to embrace diversity, alleging that the British police ‘acts as the cultural engineering arm of the middle-class state’. There is no understanding that the police’s central function is the maintenance of capitalist order and instead the Workers Party maintains a naïve belief that the police’s role is ‘protecting the poor and the vulnerable’. As such they ‘will work to expand the social care system and integrate it with national policing.’
The Liberal Democrats also avoid specific proposals. They are committed to ‘restoring proper community policing’ and ‘ending prison overcrowding’ without specifying how many extra police or prison places this would entail. Like the other parties they ignore the statistics on crime preferring to assert that: ‘Serious violence is destroying too many young lives. Our communities are plagued by burglaries, fraud and anti-social behaviour’. Using the well-worn language of penal reform, they argue for ‘improving rehabilitation in prisons’ without any ideas on how this long standing, but never achieved, aspiration could be delivered. Similarly, they call for an ‘urgent plan to implement the recommendations of the Baroness Casey Review’ without any real analysis about the nature of policing and why such reforms will inevitably fail. Nevertheless, their manifesto does have some proposals worth supporting, including the replacement of Police and Crime Commissioners with local authority control, ending ‘the disproportionate use of Stop and Search’ (without any definition of what constitutes ‘disproportionate’) and adopting a public health approach to youth violence (rather spoiled by talk of it being an epidemic).
The Greens also advocate a public health approach to violence and, like the Liberal Democrats,argue for an expansion in the use of restorative justice. Although trapped in the same criminal justice paradigm as other parties – they advocate investing in probation and prisons for rehabilitation – they are distinct in offering some welcome proposals. In particular their commitments to decriminalise sex work and the possession of illegal drugs are a positive move away from universal law-and-order solutions. There remains some naïveté in the Green’s manifesto particularly around building trust and in the police and seeing the solution to misogyny as making it a hate crime. There are good reasons why trust in the police is low and expanding criminalisation through hate laws does nothing to address the violence against ‘protected’ groups.
So, we come to the Labour manifesto. This is the important one as Labour will form the next government. As a whole the manifesto lacks ambition. It is clear Labour does not represent significant change. Their offer is to manage capitalism more competently than the Conservatives. Their priority is ‘wealth creation’ and they remain committed to the cuts already programmed by the outgoing government. Austerity is baked in. A quick search of the manifesto reveals that there is no mention of redistribution and inequality is mentioned only once. The only hope is that there will be growth and that some might just trickle down. So, no promises.
When it comes to law-and-order, Labour is determined to swim in the mainstream of British political discourse. The manifesto talks about the ‘antisocial behaviour (that) blights our town and city centres’ and Labour’s commitment to ‘tackle the epidemic of serious violence’, apicture that is painted without reference to any evidence, but legitimises a punitive agenda. It allows for them to commit to ‘introducing new Respect Orders – powers to ban persistent adult offenders from town centres’; to ‘equip officers with the powers they need’, and to require the police to target ‘repeat offenders with the tactics and tools normally reserved for counter-terror and serious organised crime investigations.’ To achieve this 13,000 new police are promised. No specific detail is given on the extent of their promised expansion of prisons beyond a commitment to ‘use all relevant powers to build the prisons so badly needed.’ The manifesto condemns the ‘Conservatives’ failure to build sufficient places’ which we are told means that ‘fewer dangerous criminals are locked up because of a lack of space’. We can be sure that if they ever materialise, these new cells will be used to continue warehousing working class, particularly racialised, people. Labour will ensure that the rich get richer and the poor get prison.
Whilst some proposals are superficially attractive, further analysis reveals their problematic nature. For example, there is a commitment to halve violence against women and girls. However, this will largely be achieved through exclusive criminal justice mechanisms: rape units in every police force, specialist domestic abuse workers in 999 control rooms, and victim support workers in court rooms. In a similar way, a concern for the children of prisoners is not about those kids welfare or getting courts to consider the impact on children when they imprison their parents, but is instead concerned to offer them ‘support to break the cycle’ of offending. In effect this will further stigimitise those children and subject them to intensive surveillance by the police and other state agencies.
The Labour party, like all the other parties, has an implicit understanding of crime based on a stereotype of what it is and who commits it. The focus is predominately on the relatively minor harms of young people and other relatively poor people. The much more dangerous harms of the powerful are largely ignored. Whilst Labour promises to take action on historic injustices such as Grenfell Tower, there is no commitment to address the underlying causes of such harms. Labour’s refusal to reverse Conservative policies that have increased child poverty illustrate their commitment to delivering hard times, particularly to the poorest people. It is in this context their promise to dramatically expand police and prisons should be understood.
Central to the ideas of abolitionism is that repressive state apparatuses like the police and prisons will not just disappear. Abolition will also involve radical changes to our society, transformations in power structures, income distribution and social priorities. We may be committed to the defunding and ultimate abolition of the police and prisons but we realize that this will only be possible with revolutionary change. A better world is possible. These manifestos do not offer this. Instead, they advocate policies designed to maintain the existing unjust social order. As Labour makes clear its commitment is to ‘wealth creation’ rather than addressing structural inequalities or poverty. There is apparently not the money to increase tax on the richest or abolish the two-child policy; a policy that directly results in child poverty. As we move into a new phase of austerity the state will need to have the capacity to maintain and intensify inequality and poverty. Labour realises this requires strengthening the state’s repressive apparatus – more police and more prisons. This will not be easy. As nearly all the manifestos explicitly recognise public confidence in the police is low. Significant sections of working class and racialised communities recognise the oppressive function of the police. Few communities want prisons built in their neighbourhood. Many people want a more just society. Our challenge is to organise, highlight not only why police and prisons are bad, but also why a better world is possible.