The Government proposes to break the destructive cycle of crime and ensure more offenders make amends to victims and communities for the harm they have caused. This means introducing more effective sentencing policies, as well as overhauling the system of rehabilitation to reduce reoffending.
- We are introducing a ‘rehabilitation revolution’ that will pay independent providers to reduce reoffending, paid for by the savings this new approach will generate within the criminal justice system.
- We are conducting a full review of sentencing policy to ensure that it is effective in deterring crime, protecting the public, punishing offenders and cutting reoffending.
- We are tackling reoffending by placing greater emphasis on dealing with inmates' drug and alcohol addiction and on treating mental illness.
- We are making offenders do a full five-day week of hard work and job-seeking under new proposals for community sentences.
- We have toughened up community sentences so that offenders are forced to spend longer in their homes.
- We will partially implement the Prisoners’ Earnings Act 1996 to allow deductions from the earnings of prisoners in properly paid work to be paid into the Victims' Fund.
- We are meeting the Government's commitment to provide rape crisis centres with stable, long-term funding by announcing that up to £9.8m per year, for three years, will be available for voluntary-sector groups offering specialist support to victims and witnesses.
- We are carrying out a fundamental reform of Legal Aid to make it work more efficiently and ensure it is targeted at those who need it most.
- We are tackling the damaging compensation culture that is costing businesses and other defendants millions of pounds each year.
- We have established a Commission to investigate the creation of a UK Bill of Rights that protects and extends British liberties, that incorporates and builds on all our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, and ensures that these rights continue to be enshrined in British law.
- We have implemented the Bribery Act, making it illegal to offer or receive bribes and to fail to prevent bribery.