Think tank calls for fundamental changes to policing and criminal justice

Think tank calls for fundamental changes to policing and criminal justice

Fundamental changes to policing and criminal justice are needed because Britain has become a nation of "passive bystanders" who expect ministers to be responsible for every crime that is committed, a think tank said.
In order to move away from the current "centralised and technocratic" system of "Robocop justice", Reform argues for the introduction of local justice commissioners, community police boxes and regionalised criminal justice policies.

The group wants to see an "information revolution", with televised court proceedings and prison activities, detailed crime mapping and online offender databases.

It is also calling for the introduction of a National Bureau of Investigation to tackle serious nationwide crime, and innovative policing including the use of more volunteers and and specialist "hit squads" to deal with pressing issues.

The authors wrote: "Britain's 'Robocop' criminal justice system is a one-size-fits-all-system, where human judgment and engagement has been replaced by bureaucratic process and where the machine has gained a momentum of its own. "The result has been a removal of autonomy from localities and the criminal justice profession, resulting in a 'policing by numbers' approach with perverse incentives and poor results. Thus, the additional funds put in to the service have failed to deliver the improvements that they should have done."
They added: "The result is a criminal justice system without a human face - bureaucratic, technocratic and machine-like. If the face of British criminal justice was once George Dixon of Dock Green, the new face might be the Robocop of Detroit's fictional future."

The PPP comments …. And which RoboCop has been beavering away for years generating this bureaucratic process and a criminal justice system without a human face?