Two weeks ago, I spoke about our mission.  We want to build a nation full of people with aspirations, where those who work hard can get ahead and where no one gets left behind.  We need a stronger private sector, welfare that works, and schools that teach. Today I want to talk about another critical part of helping people to rise up, and that is confronting the crime and bad behavior that holds so many people down. Go to some neighborhoods in our country and you can feel that aspiration is dead.  Children are learning from a young age that life is about surviving, not thriving.  Gang leaders are their role models and drug dealers their career advisors.  This doesn’t just matter to the elderly lady with five bolts on her door or the woman terrified to walk home in the dark.  It matters to all of us.  We will not rise as a country if we leave millions behind and write off whole communities. So today I want to tell you about our approach to crime and justice and the bold, unprecedented action we’re taking.  I’m the politician who has argued frequently for tough punishment.  So do I take a tough line on crime or a touchy-feely one? In no other public debate do the issues get as polarized as this. On climate change you don’t have to be in denial on the one hand or campaigning to get every car off the road on the other.  Life isn’t that simple. Government policy isn’t that simple.  Yet with the crime debate, people seem to want one extreme or the other. Lock them up or let them out.  Blame the criminal or blame society. Be tough or act soft. We’re so busy going backwards and forwards we never move the debate ahead. What I have been trying to do, in opposition and now in government, is break out of this sterile debate and show a new way forward.  Let’s be tough but intelligent.  We need to be tough because the foundation of effective criminal justice is personal responsibility. Committing a crime is always a choice.  That’s why the primary, proper response to crime is not explanations or excuses, it is punishment.  It must be proportionate, meaningful punishment. When a crime is serious enough, the only thinkable punishment is a long prison sentence.  This is what victims and society deserve. Victims need to know the criminal will be held to account and dealt with.  The society bit really matters.  Retribution is not a dirty word.  It is important to society that the revulsion we all feel against crime is properly recognized.  But punishment is what offenders both deserve and need.  It says to them that they are adults and that their actions have consequences. To treat criminals as victims, to say they had no choice, is to treat them like children.  I firmly believe in their right to be treated as adults, with the responsibility to carry the consequences of their actions.  But that’s not the whole story. Just being tough isn’t a successful strategy in itself.  Come with me to any prison in this country.  There you’ll meet muggers, robbers, and burglars.  But you’ll also meet young people who can’t read, teenagers addicted to drugs, people who’ve never worked a day in their whole lives. These people need help so they can become part of the solution and not remain part of the problem.  Recognizing this isn’t soft or liberal.  It’s common sense. We’ll never create a safer society unless we give people, especially young people, opportunities and chances away from crime.  Prevention is the cheapest and most effective way to deal with crime.  Everything else is simply picking up the pieces of failure that has gone before.  That’s part of what I mean by being intelligent as well as tough. That means not just saying what people want to hear, not playing to the gallery, but thinking hard about dealing with the causes of crime as well as the fallout.  Today, being intelligent has got to mean something else too.  The politics of the blank check are well and truly over.  We’ll have to achieve our ambitions when there is much less money than there used to be. The only way to achieve our ambitions is reform.  It has to be radical, intelligent reform. So much of what went wrong in public services previously wasn’t because the money was missing, it was because the methods were wrong. We had top-down, bureaucratic centralizing.  We judged every service by the money you put in rather than by the service you got out. Our whole reform agenda is about turning this on its head. We need to go from big government to big society, with more choice, more competition, more openness.  You see it when the welfare providers are paid by results and the hospitals publish their results online. Some say this is fine in welfare, fine with hospitals or fine with schools, but it won’t work in criminal justice.  They think when it comes to keeping people safe, we’ve got to stick with the old, state-heavy approach.  I believe that’s wrong. It was the old approach that gave us police stuck behind desks filling in forms.  It left us with the criminal justice system chasing ridiculous, unhelpful targets.  It left us with sky-high recidivism. We are bringing the logic of our public service reform agenda which includes transparency, payment for results, and accountability to transform criminal justice.  Every part of that system needs change.  Every part needs tough, but intelligent reform.  I want to explain how that’s working at all levels of the criminal justice system. Let’s start with the police.  I am profoundly grateful for the job our police officers do. Years ago I used to run near City Park every morning, and on my route there was a small stone monument.  It said, “Here fell Officer Christopher Head, 12th August 1966.”  It was a daily reminder of this simple truth:  Police officers put on their uniform in the morning, kiss their children goodbye, and leave home having no idea about the dangers they might face. Police officers are professional, brave, and instinctively selfless.  These are the people who work on our streets and protect our families day-in and day-out. All of us owe them our thanks.  All of us owe them our respect.  For all those who wear the uniform, it’s essential we get policing right.  For years police officers were held back from doing the job they signed up for.  We had targets like the offences-brought-to-justice target which encouraged police to chase easy wins. I remember being out on the beat with a fellow police officer in our town.  He felt he had to book a boy for taking some money from his mother’s purse, rather than just a stiff talking to down at the station.  That’s what the culture and targets demanded.  He knew it was ridiculous.  Everyone knew it was ridiculous.  But the targets forced his hand. Another big problem is our out-of-control bureaucracy.  We’ve got police officers spending almost half their shift on paperwork.  We need to fundamentally reform the police and allow them to get on with the tough, no-nonsense policing that they want and we want. We’ve scrapped all the targets and given them a single, core objective.  The objective is to cut crime.  We’ve ended micro-management from higher up and returned professional discretion to local forces. The notion that you had to fill out a form every time you stopped someone on the street is gone.  We’re going further, reforming police pay so it rewards crime-fighting, not just time served.  We’re changing the leadership of the police too. Our reforms are comprehensive, they are sophisticated, and they are working. Even at a time of tight budgets, the frontline is being protected. The number of neighborhood police officers is up. Public satisfaction is up and crime is down.  If you like official figures, here they are. Even though in real terms, central police spending cuts are around 20 per cent over four years, the latest figures released at the end of last week show that crime is down 6 per cent in the last year. We can have tough policing when money is tight. We’re bringing intelligent reform too.  There’s more accountability and transparency to put people in charge of policing.  That’s what the police and crime commissioners are all about. These are big, important elections coming up.  It’s the first time they are being held.  People are going to be voting in their own law-and-order champion.  We need one person who sets the budgets, sets the priorities, hires and fires, and bangs heads together to get things done. Some people are saying that no one’s bothered, that people aren’t interested in how we fight crime in their area.  I don’t agree.  I say look at crime maps and you’ll come to the same conclusion. They said no one would care about transparency, but our Web site has had 500 million hits and counting. The more high profile police and crime commissioners get, the more engaged people will be, and the more pressure they’ll put on them to deliver tough local policing. So my message for these elections is clear:  If you want more tough policing, you can get it.  If you want cops who are on the beat on your street, cracking down on antisocial behavior, focusing on the things you care about, then don’t just talk about it, get out in November and vote for it. Intelligent reform is happening at the national level too, with the National Crime Agency. The NCA is Britain’s version of the FBI.  We recognize that there are some highly serious and organized crimes, like human trafficking, money laundering, and drug rings that need the very best in terms of national coordination.  The next part of the criminal justice chain is prosecution and here again we need tough but intelligent reform. Too often the story is the same.  Someone gets arrested in the middle of the night.  They get out on bail.  It takes months before they appear in court.  Then the day dawns and they’ve disappeared. It’s why you get whole walls of police stations papered with pictures of people missing on bail.  We saw with the riots last summer that it doesn’t have to be like that.  Justice was swift and it was tough.  We want that all the time. So we’re opening our courts earlier in the morning, in the evenings and weekends, because crime doesn’t keep normal working hours and neither should our criminal justice system.  Already this is happening in 48 courts across the country. Another innovation is video links between police stations and courts.  If someone is arrested, the police can flick the switch on a monitor and get them in front of a magistrate in hours rather than months.  So there’s no bail to jump and no cracks to slip through. We need to toughen up the process in court too. Today, once the verdict is passed, the defendant can stand in the witness box and make their case for a more lenient sentence, but too often the victim doesn’t get a say.  The one person whose life has been torn apart is kept silent. We want to give more victims the chance to be heard, to say how their life has been affected by the crime.  To back that up, we will be appointing a new victims’ commissioner to make sure that victims’ voices are heard not just in court but right at the heart of government. We need intelligent reform, too, to open up our whole justice system.  Today it’s all too closed, opaque, and unaccountable. We hear secondhand what sentence a criminal is getting.  Wouldn’t it be better if we could hear and watch the result and the reasoning directly? So we are legislating to start televising the sentences that judges deliver, so that people can hear why a decision has been reached directly from the judge. This will start in the Court of Appeal next year, and in the long term we want to see this happening in the Crown Court as well. When those criminals are convicted, we need to make sure the punishment fits the crime.  At every single level of sentencing this government is getting tougher. Where fines used to be limited, magistrates will be able to impose unlimited fines.  While the maximum compensation that criminals used to be liable for was 10,000, we are uncapping it.  If you cost someone 10,000 or 20,000, you should potentially have to pay that back. We are toughening up community sentences too. Having a monthly meeting with your probation officer is hardly a punishment, so tomorrow in Parliament, something important is happening.  We are laying amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill, making sure that every community sentence contains an element of punishment. We think this tough change is aligned with an intelligent reform. We’re introducing new GPS satellite tagging that can pinpoint exactly where offenders are, making it literally impossible to duck under the radar. If you’re on a community sentence, you will be supervised, you will be properly punished, and you will be forced to complete that sentence.  Of course, for many crimes, only one form of punishment will do and that is prison. I want to be clear.  I want to see people who ruin the lives of others, the rapists, murderers, and muggers, behind bars.  I want them kept there for a long time. I’ve always supported the principle of the life sentence. If you do something heinous, for the rest of your life you will be either in prison or on license and subject to recall if you step out of line.  I don’t believe that’s old-fashioned.  I think it is vital, so we are increasing life sentences. A new two strikes and you’re out rule means that if you commit two serious sexual or violent offences, you get life.  This is not at the judge’s discretion.  It’s a mandatory life sentence. We are creating a new maximum sentence of life for those who import guns and death onto our streets.  We are looking at toughening up knife sentences, because to me probation for carrying a knife just does not seem enough.  For anyone sentenced to a spell in prison, there will be space in prison.  There will be no arbitrary targets for our prison population.  The number of people behind bars will not be about bunks available, it will be about how many people have committed serious crimes. Once they are inside prison, we’re toughening up the regime.  Too many prisoners see out their time by just lying on their beds for hours and hours watching TV, doing nothing, and learning nothing.  So we are turning those prisons from places of idleness into places of work. I’m talking about places like the prison in Manchester, where prisoners work in the laundry or printing shop for up to 40 hours a week.  Today there are a number of programs where it is possible for prisoners to work and earn. This is about fit and able people getting out of their cells, having a structured day, earning respect, and earning privileges.  When they earn money, we’ll be making them pay a chunk of it back to their victims too. I don’t want there to be any doubt that we will be tougher on the punishment of prisoners.  But it’s not good enough just being tough, locking people up, and thinking that’s enough. We need to be intelligent too about what happens to these people during and after their punishment. Here’s why.  At the moment, six out of ten of those leaving jail are reconvicted within two years.  If you think that figure’s depressing, try this. While those in the care system account for just 1 per cent of children, a quarter of those in prison were in care as children. Half the prison population say they have no qualifications.  We have got to give these people a chance.  Not just for their sake, but for ours.  We’ve got to stop that revolving door that sucks millions of pounds of public money in and spits thousands of unreformed offenders out. We’ve tried just locking people up and it’s failed. We’ve tried letting people out with a little bit of cash in their pocket and no help on the outside.  Guess what?  They’ve gone back to their old ways. I say that we should use the time they are inside to try to have a positive impact on them. This is not a case of whether prison works or doesn’t work.  We need to make prison work.  Once people are on the outside, we’ve got to stick with them and give them proper support, because it’s not outer space we’re releasing these people into, it’s our streets and our towns among our families and our children. That’s why this government is engaged in what can only be described as a rehabilitation revolution.  Our main, driving mission is this: to see more people properly punished but fewer offenders returning to the system. To achieve that, we’re asking charities, companies, and voluntary organizations to come and help us rehabilitate our prisoners.  Give these offenders new skills.  Help us educate them. If they’ve been in a gang, send a reformed gang member to meet them at the prison gates and take them under their wing.  If they’re on drugs, try the latest techniques to get them clean. Do whatever it takes to get these people back living decent, productive lives.  We will pay you for that, but once again the payments will depend on results. We’re going to pay people by the lives they turn around.  Just think of what this means for the taxpayer. When this government came to power, we were spending 40,000 a year per person just on locking people up.  With payment for results, your money goes into what works: prisoners going straight, crime coming down, and our country getting safer. It’s such a good idea I want to put rocket boosters under it.  Indeed, today I have an announcement to make. By the end of 2015, I want to see payment by results spread right across rehabilitation.  Of course, there will be some high-risk offenders for whom this is not appropriate, but this approach should be the norm rather than the exception.  I want to see rehabilitation reach more of those who would benefit from it. Today, rehab just goes to those who have been inside for a year or more.  That misses all those who go in for shorter sentences yet reoffend time and time again.  So I want to look at making them part of the rehabilitation revolution too. I’ve touched on all the parts of the criminal justice chain, from policing to prison, but where we need the most intelligent reform is prevention.  Let’s try to stop all this happening in the first place. The riots last summer were a stark warning that parts of our society are broken.  They told us we need to intervene much earlier in the story, before the jail cell, before the robbery, before the petty theft. As the CSJ has argued so passionately, having a strong family is absolutely vital to a person’s life chances and we believe that.  Strengthening families, strengthening partnerships, strengthening marriages, encouraging commitment are all part of our agenda.  It’s why we’re shaking up fostering and adoption, ending the scandal that left children languishing in the care system.