Examination of Witnesses (Questions 234
- 239)
TUESDAY 15 JULY 2008
LOUISE CASEY
CB
Q234 Alun Michael: Louise, welcome
to this evidence session of the Justice Select Committee. Would
you introduce yourself for the record, please?
Louise Casey: Yes, I am Louise
Casey, currently at the Cabinet Office. I have just finished a
review into Engaging Communities in Fighting Crime.
Q235 Alun Michael: Thank you very
much. A lot of what you said in your report—and we will
go on to some of the detail in a moment—is about communicating
with the public and their perception about what happens. How do
you think that can be dealt with?
Louise Casey: I think one of the
most fundamental things for me about the review was actually things
like two-thirds of the public do not feel that the criminal justice
system et al are on their side and respect the rights of
the perpetrators more than they respect the rights of the victims.
In order to get people to report crime, to give evidence in court,
actually to feel a sense of neighbourliness, we have to challenge
that very fundamentally, and what we have tried to do is come
up with a series of practical suggestions, Mr Michael, in order
to try and change that, and that does include things like communicating
very clearly the consequences when people commit crime. I think
the public are very straightforward. As I put in my review, they
are not daft. They know the difference between right and wrong
and they want to know that when people do something wrong they
face consequences. I think it flows from that, plus, obviously,
through into some of the structural stuff about how local authorities,
the criminal justice system and the police work together. I have
some fundamental views on the messages that we need to stand together
about and need to get better about through to some suggestions
on perhaps how some of the machinery might change so people locally
can start to rebuild their trust in those people.
Q236 Alun Michael: You say in the
report that the public are confused by the range of local structures
attempting to engage them in conversations about crime. How would
a neighbourhood crime and justice co-ordinator enable a closer
working relationship between partners without further confusing
accountability locally?
Louise Casey: My starting point
is that partnership is a good thing. If we go back to 10-odd years
ago, we did not have crime and disorder reduction partnerships,
there were not local criminal justice boards, and I think all
of that is a good thing, but I suppose what became clear was that
the public want to know, in terms of catching criminals, that
is the cops, in terms of preventing people turning into criminals,
who does that, probably that is local government, and in terms
of who tries to stop people becoming criminals again or actually
makes them pay for the consequences, that is the criminal justice
system, and I felt that greater clarity around that was quite
important. In terms of very practically knitting together, and
I am sure you are much more aware of this than I am because some
of you have been sitting on this Committee for longer than I have
been doing the review, if you have got a situation where you have
a local criminal justice board that essentially is at county or
force level, that is very, very divorced from me, a member of
the public, where actually I want to know that my neighbourhood
policing team—if that is the vehicle that people are suggesting
is used—can also communicate with me, not just what are
the problems in my ward or in my neighbourhood that I have got
a problem with, what are you doing about them, but also crime
information, including what happens to some of the people that
have been convicted of crime in my area. I think, Mr Michael,
what I felt was that something needed to give that made that slightly
lower down the structure, as it were, than the local criminal
justice board and the CDRP and the this, that and the other. I
did not really want to get into lots of structures up here. I
am interested in the sort of sense that perhaps you need somebody
that knits together the policing, the crime and the criminal justice,
that makes sure every neighbourhood policing team has got what
they need.
Q237 Alun Michael: A sort of local
one-stop face, you mean?
Louise Casey: We did not go as
far as that. Because the review was very much concentrated on
what would help the public restore their confidence, I have not
got to necessarily working through the machinery of what that
might look like, but I think something is needed at a much lower
level to do some of that joining up. I think we have got to be
clear that the public need to have a set of information, not just
what is trendy for the moment, like crime maps. They need something,
to be honest, a bit more drudgery, which is what you said the
problems were in your area, what we have done about them, if anybody
committed a crime in the last couple of months, perhaps whether
we caught them and, actually, people in your area have been cleaning
up these bus stops because they committed this sort of offence.
I do not feel the structures as they stand at the moment will
help with some of that.
Q238 Mr Heath: I am just remembering
back to my days as Chairman of a police authority and the post
Scarman reforms and the police and community consultative groups,
which actually did exactly that. They provided the local information,
they provided the opportunity for members of the public to come
and hear directly from police, from the magistrates, what was
going on in their local area and to express their views. Nobody
turned up. We spent our whole time in empty church halls and village
halls with the same three or four neighbourhood watch people and
a young person purporting to be "the youth" coming along
and telling us what they thought, which had no relationship to
what the public thought.
Louise Casey: That does not mean
to say that we should not---. I have views on police consultative
groups as they are. I think, again, they are quite strategic,
they are a bit above it all. I do not mean above it all as in
not wanting to listen to what people say. They are a little further
up the tier. I am not sure, where I live, a police consultative
group will be the people that tell me what kind of crimes are
happening in my street, that there are not any a lot of the time,
but if they are worried about litter and graffiti these are the
things that are being done about it. The police consultative group
never really did that. That is the sort of thing I am looking
for really, Mr Heath. I feel that what we need is something that
is very practical, is very straightforward, that lots of people
are already doing, but we do need to knit the justice bit into
it. All around the country at the minute you have got local authorities
telling people in various forums, you have got the police out
there telling people in various forums and I kind of feel, on
the public's behalf, really as their champion consumer, a bit
of this needs joining up so that you are only having one conversation.
Police consultative groups, people still go to them; some CDRPs
find them useful. I am talking about something that is much more
practical and talks about the issues that people want to hear.
Q239 Mr Heath: I want to know what
is it that is more practical. What is more practical than having
a meeting available to a person on their doorstep in their locality?
How you provide pieces of paper, or whatever?
Louise Casey: If you look at some
of the agenda items on some of the consultative forums that go
on around the country, they might talk about structural things—the
amount of money that is going into a particular thing, capping—all
of those sorts of things—they will talk about the rate that
crime might be coming down in my area by 325%. People just want
to know. I thought there was a problem in our street: the litter
is a constant problem, there is graffiti on that wall and, as
soon as you clear it off, it is back up there again and there
is nothing for the kids to do on a Friday night. What are you
going to do about it? That is the conversation that they want
to have with the powers that be. Fulfilling that conversation
has to be the police, but it also has to be local government,
and in terms of consequences for people that do the graffiti endlessly,
if they are caught, that we actually get to see that something
is done about it. I think that is the type of practical information
that the review, in some detail, goes into.
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