Crime and Justice: What's in the King's Speech? Video now out

On Monday, over 160 people joined our online panel discussion on the crime and justice legislative proposals announced in the King’s Speech. Joining our Director, Richard Garside, to discuss the potential pitfalls and challenges faced by the government as it seeks to pass and implement its programmes, were:

• Rob Allen, researcher and consultant on criminal justice and prisons
• Baroness Claire Fox, writer, journalist, lecturer and politician who sits in the House of Lords as a non-affiliated life peer
• Professor Jen Hendry, Director of the Graduate School for the Faculty of Social Science, University of Leeds
• Dr Rory Kelly, lecturer in law, University of Galway

They also discussed some of the other proposals relevant to crime and justice as well as the general purpose of the King’s Speech (see below for a summary).

Watch the discussion below or via our Youtube channel.

Bills discussed by the panel

1. The Crime and Policing Bill

The Crime and Policing Bill was described in the King’s Speech in the following terms:

Legislation will be brought forward to strengthen community policing, give the police greater powers to deal with anti-social behaviour

The Bill is expected to include measures on:

1. Neighbourhood policing, related to the Labour manifesto pledge to establish a “neighbourhood policing guarantee”
2. Giving the Police Inspectorate powers to intervene in ‘failing police forces’, improving the vetting of police recruits, and establishing national standards for procurement, shared services and specialist functions
3. Intensified civil orders, including new ‘Respect Orders’, and making it easier to introduce the existing Public Spaces Protection Orders, to tackle ‘anti-social behaviour’.
4. A specific offence of assaulting a shopworker and scrapping provisions introduced by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, which made shoplifting of goods under £200 a summary-only offence. 
5. A ban on so-called ‘ninja swords’, sanctions for executives of online companies that sell prohibited weapons
6. New laws on the criminal exploitation of children, and creation of local arrangements for ‘Young Futures’ prevention partnerships.

2. The Victims, Courts and Public Protection Bill

According to the King’s Speech:

Legislation will be brought forward to … strengthen support for victims.

This brief description of the Victims, Courts and Public Protection Bill is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Among the main provisions in the Bill expected are:

1. Strengthening the powers of the Victims’ Commissioner
2. Forcing those found guilty in court to attend their sentencing hearing 
3. Restricting parental access for those convicted of child sex offences, and making it more difficult for them to change their names 
4. Expanding the use of Associate prosecutors in court cases. 
5. Specialist courts to fast-track rape cases.

3. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill

According to the King’s Speech:

My Ministers will get Britain building, including through planning reform, as they seek to accelerate the delivery of high quality infrastructure and housing

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill proposes broad-ranging reforms to the planning system, and will be significant for future prison building plans. In particular, it will greater powers to ministers to overrule local objections to proposed ‘Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects’, including prisons.