Prolific criminals should be in prison, not free to offend again

The pervading sense that we are less safe than we used to be is one of the most harmful but under-discussed taxes we are increasingly paying. The parents worried for their children playing outside or travelling home from school. The cashier in the high street shop, now stuck behind a screen for protection. The tradesman, waking in the middle of the night, worried that his van has been broken into.

The crime and violence plaguing our communities is not just mentally taxing - studies show that acquisitive crime alone costs several per cent of GDP. Our aim should not just be to stem the crime wave - it should be to slash crime dramatically and build a fundamentally safer, stronger country.

The Labour Party is nowhere on this subject. Sir Keir Starmer has said on crime what he has said on most policy areas: bureaucratic verbiage. The cornerstone of the so-called crime plan he set out last year is to "modernise British policing". How exactly? He spoke of "standards raised", "training overhauled", "specialist units created" and so on. Given the thinness of his policies, Starmer should be arrested for wasting police time.

Labour's vacuity makes a recent proposal set out by the New Conservatives for tougher policing and sentencing against prolific offenders all the more important. According to Ministry of Justice data from 2000 to 2021, 52 per cent of all crime is committed by just 9 per cent of criminals. In a report last year, David Spencer, a former police officer now working for the think tank Policy Exchange, identified the group of "hyper-prolific offenders" - those who have accumulated 45 convictions or more. Shockingly, 52.7 per cent of the time, they were not sent to jail for their latest - 45th or more - conviction.

What this means in practice would make every Briton's blood boil. A man in Gateshead was convicted of nine charges of theft last year. He had 343 previous convictions. Punishment? A £100 fine and 24 months community order. A man on the Isle of Wight was convicted of seven counts of theft. He had 115 previous convictions, mostly for shoplifting. Punishment?

Eight weeks imprisonment, suspended (so never actually imprisoned). Those caught carrying a knife for the second time are avoiding prison nearly half the time.

The solution must surely be to lock up far more of these prolific offenders. Given they are responsible for so much of it, crime would plummet.

That must start with common sense policing, but common sense doesn't seem to be common in policing right now. The former home secretary Suella Braverman did much to drive forward change by mandating that police attend all burglaries; shamefully it has been applied haphazardly. Where it has, it has worked. In Lambeth, the Met targeted prolific offenders across the ward. The result? The number of shoplifting offences detected rose from 2 per cent to 55 per cent.

The "luxury belief " class who dominate Westminster, and particularly the Labour frontbench, will no doubt balk at this proposal. "Lock up more criminals!? Did you not get the memo that we lock up far too many already?" But politics is the continual exercise of weighing varying rights. Yes, this proposal would limit a minority of criminals' "right" to endless chances. But it would also realise people's right to live in a community not fearful of drugs, violence and break-ins. It is the most deprived communities that would benefit the most. On the question of these "competing rights", it is crystal clear where the British people would stand.

The obstacle preventing this is our overburdened prisons. The tail is now wagging the dog: our lack of prison capacity is dictating our approach to crime. The tough approach we need is being hamstrung by a lack of places.

We can and should free up 10 per cent of our prison estate by deporting foreign offenders, as Alex Chalk, the Justice Secretary, has commendably committed to doing. But there is no doubt this policy would still require a major and rapid prison building programme. I do not flinch from that. We should make delivering a massive expansion of our prison estate, to lock up prolific offenders and keep the public safe, a central Conservative mission.

It will require us to get economic growth and therefore tax revenues up to fund it. And to find a way to build and maintain prisons more quickly and costeffectively. We should start with consistent use of the planning Special Development Order that Boris Johnson and I introduced to build prisons at pace in 2021.

All of this is achievable. There is too little imagination in Britain right now; too little discussion of the future we want for our country and how to get there. Well, I believe a crime-free Britain to be a vital part of that future. I believe we are a country of second chances, but not third, fourth or 45th chances. The incarceration of many more of the small number of criminals responsible for the majority of crime is how we do it.