Restoring Justice: A Whole Nation Take on Tackling Crime and Delivering Safer Communities

Co-founder of Whole Nation Conservatives Igraine Gray is a Conservative activist and former council candidate, writer, published author and rehabilitated rough sleeper. Prior to the 2024 General Election she was Policy Assistant to Sir Simon Clarke.

“Justice is not just a concept; it is the foundation of a free and fair society.” – Margaret Thatcher

The British public have a basic and reasonable expectation: that they can live peacefully in their communities, that crime is taken seriously, and that the guilty are swiftly brought to justice. When that fundamental promise is broken, the very fabric of society begins to fray.

Margaret Thatcher understood this better than most. Her enduring commitment to law and order wasn’t a political slogan. It was a moral imperative. Today, that principle is under strain. From victims left waiting years for justice, to repeat offenders emboldened by inaction, our justice system is not delivering. If Conservatives are to remain the party of public safety and responsibility, we must act boldly.

The system cannot remain under siege.

The numbers are stark. In England and Wales, only 6.4% of recorded crimes resulted in a charge or summons last year, up only a fraction from historic lows (1). For victims, this confirms what they already fear: that crime is no longer met with consequence.

The Crown Court backlog has ballooned past 73,000 cases (2), with serious trials often delayed by more than two years. Such delays don’t just inconvenience, they corrode the very foundation of justice. Evidence weakens. Witnesses vanish. Confidence erodes.

The poor result of this is multi-layered. Good police officers feel demoralised. Communities grow disillusioned. And criminals — particularly repeat offenders, who are responsible for over half of all crime — operate with impunity.

Firstly we must ask, how did we get here?

Four policy failures lie at the heart of this breakdown:

Hidden, reactive policing: Despite the 20,000-officer recruitment (3), visible neighbourhood policing has withered. The public feels fewer bobbies on the beat and more crime in their communities. The satisfaction of the local concern aspect of policing has been diminishing for some time (4)

A creaking, outdated court system: With underfunded infrastructure and antiquated processes, the justice system is slower than ever. Court backlogs have almost doubled since 2019 (2).

Reoffending rife, rehabilitation weak: Adults released from custodial sentences of less than 12 months have a proven reoffending rate of 56.9%, and the reoffending rate is not improving (5). Sentences lack clarity. Community orders are inconsistently applied. The result? Criminals learn nothing. Except how to offend again.

Planning rules blocking prison capacity: The justice system cannot function without the ability to detain serious offenders, yet building the prison places needed is actively obstructed by our own planning system. It takes an average of four years to get planning permission for new prison sites, and legal challenges have delayed or derailed major expansions at sites like HMP Gartree and HMP Grendon (6). Without capacity, sentencing is compromised and overcrowding worsens.

These failures don’t fall evenly. The most vulnerable are hit hardest, women trapped with abusive partners, pensioners living in fear, children exposed to gang culture. Crime is not just a public order issue. It’s a matter of justice and decency.

Society, however, must shoulder its share of responsibility. This crisis cannot be blamed on the justice system alone. It reflects a deeper societal failing, one that Conservatives must be honest about. Honest about previously enabling, and honest about the limitation of government.

Broken homes, poor discipline, educational collapse, and untreated mental illness all feed the pipeline of crime. In 2023, 47% of prisoners were homeless before custody, and almost 60% had a diagnosable mental health condition (7). That is not justice, it’s dysfunction.

Youth exclusion is no better. In the 2022/23 academic year, over 9,000 children were permanently excluded from school, disproportionately from gang-afflicted areas (8). When schools cannot uphold order, discipline is not taught at school or at home, and families are unsupported, it is no surprise that crime follows.

The state cannot be everywhere, nor should it be. But it must be strong where it matters: schools, policing, housing, and mental health. These are not distractions from criminal justice reform, they are its foundations.

So what would be a Whole Nation blueprint for justice?

The most important thing is to stop the drift into the soft complacency of managed decline. The Conservative path forward must be one of strength, clarity, and accountability.

Reassert Neighbourhood Policing: The public want to see officers on the streets, not behind desks. This is not just a matter of boots on the ground, but of harnessing new technologies and creating new ones. For example on Teesside, Cleveland Police had the COPA app for reporting and also looked at investing in behind the scenes investment to free up time from desk work (9).

Slash the Court Backlog: Our courts must be faster, and apply the law equally without fear. By investing in mobile courts, digitisation, and expanded virtual hearings, alongside the work to revitalise and expand current court infrastructure, we can halve the Crown Court backlog over the parliament. It’s not radical. It’s responsible.

Break the Cycle of Reoffending: We need to stop tolerating failure. Persistent criminals must face firm sentences, but we must also mandate rehabilitation measures where appropriate, considering the reoffending rate. That means housing, employment support, and mental health treatment post-release. Not as a handout, but as a condition for reintegration. Break reoffending also means the deportation of foreign national offenders as needed, who have not respected the responsibility of being in this country, and therefore should not be in a position to do so again.

Reform Planning to Build Prisons Faster: A justice system worthy of the name needs the capacity to hold offenders securely and humanely. That means removing the bureaucratic choke points in our planning system. Long-term this means the overhaul of the model to a zone-based model, and stripping out the unnecessary rules and regulations that block and spiral the cost of everything from prisons to housing to community assets to energy infrastructure. A revival of the Jenrick reforms (10), which could also be even more streamlined, would be a great jumping off point. Short term, however, a smaller scope fast-track mechanism for prison construction could reduce costs by up to 30% and deliver capacity on time, instead of years late (11). This was being pursued by the current administration, but whether we get this policy fully manifested is being called into question by Labour’s economic illiteracy (12). We cannot allow endless consultations and legal delays, or fiscal incompetence, to override the needs of public safety and the delivery of justice.

This is not a bureaucratic reform agenda. It is a moral cause. A functioning justice system does more than lower crime rates, it gives people their dignity back. It restores public faith that wrongdoing will be met with consequence, and that the innocent will be defended without fail.

Conservatives believe in choice, personal responsibility, and the rule of law. But those principles must be underpinned by institutions that work. The British people are not asking for perfection, they are demanding competence.

Levelling Up Begins with Law and Order

You cannot build prosperity on unsafe streets. You cannot create opportunity in areas governed by fear. The first duty of government — any government — is to protect its citizens.

If we’re serious about levelling up, this is where it starts: with safer communities, faster justice, and a system that reflects the values of the country it serves. Crime, and its consequences, disproportionately affects areas with greater poverty and poorer outcomes. It is the ultimate postcode lottery. Any government working in service to the Whole Nation, must fulfil and enable this most basic part of the social contract

Let’s fix justice, and restore order.

References

Restoring Justice: A Whole Nation Take on Tackling Crime and Delivering Safer Communities

Recent Posts

Comments