Crime: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 12:29, 20 June 2024

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Enhancing Public Safety and Disempowering Organized Crime

Introduction

Our manifesto is committed to better resourcing of policing to allow them to focus on critical social priorities, including public safety and protecting the rights of women to a safe environment. We recognize the need to disrupt organized crime and improve the effectiveness of law enforcement through innovative policy changes.

Key Objectives

Disempowering Organized Crime through Legalization of Narcotics
- Decriminalization: Legalize the manufacture, sale, and consumption of all classes of narcotics to undercut the black market.
- Health and Safety: Improve health outcomes and significantly reduce drug-related deaths through quality control at the point of sale.
- Public Health Initiatives: Continue and enhance public health initiatives to dissuade substance abuse, particularly focusing on vulnerable populations.
Reforming the Use of King's Evidence
- Enhanced Whistle-Blower Protections: Reform and extend the use of King's Evidence to encourage lawful cooperation with police.
- Secure Reporting Channels: Establish guaranteed secure channels for informants to report criminal activity safely.
- AI Integration: Utilize AI technology to protect informants and enhance the accuracy and security of information provided to law enforcement.
Focusing Policing Resources on Public Safety
- Targeted Law Enforcement: Redirect police resources from enforcing drug prohibition to tackling more serious crimes, including personal violence, and corruption.
- Women's Safety: Prioritize the protection of women, ensuring they have a safe environment free from violence and harassment.
- Community Policing: Invest in community policing initiatives to build trust and cooperation between law enforcement and local communities.

Detailed Proposals

Legalization of Narcotics
- Economic Impact: Legalizing narcotics will reduce the profitability of organized crime by eliminating the black market for drugs.
- Quality Control: Regulate the production and sale of narcotics to ensure product safety, reducing health risks associated with unregulated substances.
- Tax Revenue: Generate tax revenue from the sale of narcotics, which can be reinvested in public health, education, and addiction support services.
Reforming King's Evidence
- Legal Framework: Create a legal framework that allows individuals to report criminal offers safely and lawfully.
- Rewards for Informants: Implement a reward system for informants who provide valuable information leading to convictions, including a judge’s thanks and financial incentives.
- AI and Surveillance: Deploy AI to manage initial contacts and subsequent reporting, ensuring the security and reliability of the information provided.
Enhancing Policing for Public Safety
- Resource Allocation: Allocate police resources more effectively by focusing on preventing and responding to serious crimes.
- Women's Safety Initiatives: Develop and fund programs specifically aimed at protecting women from violence and ensuring their safety in public and private spaces.
- Community Engagement: Strengthen community policing efforts to foster stronger relationships between police and the communities they serve, enhancing overall safety and trust.

Strategic Recommendations

Holistic Policy Approach
- Integrated Strategies: Ensure that policies on narcotics, public safety, and crime prevention are integrated and mutually reinforcing.
- Collaborative Efforts: Work with public health officials, community leaders, and international partners to implement comprehensive solutions.
Public Communication and Education
- Transparency: Maintain transparent communication with the public about the benefits and rationale behind these policy changes.
- Education Campaigns: Launch education campaigns to inform the public about the new legal framework for narcotics, the importance of whistle-blowing, and community safety initiatives.
Monitoring and Evaluation
- Data-Driven Policies: Implement systems to monitor and evaluate the outcomes of these policy changes, making data-driven adjustments as necessary.
- Continuous Improvement: Ensure continuous feedback from stakeholders to improve the effectiveness of public safety and crime prevention strategies.

Conclusion

Our manifesto commitment to better resourcing of policing aims to enhance public safety, particularly protecting women's rights to a safe environment, and to disempower organized crime through innovative legal and policy reforms. By legalizing narcotics, reforming King's Evidence, and focusing policing resources on more significant social priorities, we can build a safer, more just, and inclusive society.

The war on drugs

Much crime is organized to profit from illegal import and sale where legal commerce cannot compete.

To limit these illegal opportunities we will decriminalize in particular the manufacture, sale and consumption of all classes of narcotics.

The resulting quality at the point of sale will improve health outcomes and reduce deaths significantly, while organized criminal recruitment and involvement in drug distribution will be a thing of the past.

The most lethal drug of choice, alcohol, has never been banned and will continue to kill more people and lead to more antisocial behaviour than all these decriminalized drugs put together ever have. We will continue public health initiatives to dissuade vulnerable users from substance abuse.

Supporting whistleblowers

We will reform and extend the use of King's Evidence, and in particular the policing of corruption. Anyone approached with an offer of criminal profit should be lawfully able to immediately and enthusiastically agree, contingent on his then giving heads-up notification to a guaranteed secure channel into police intelligence. Continuing to forward information should result in the informant getting the judge's thanks and a proportionate reward from the public purse when the schemers are found guilty in court.

This isn't encouraging people to participate in crime, it's what any reasonable citizen would do were the risk of being taken for a criminal, or exposed to danger as an informer, not the deterrent it currently must be. It would, among other things, bring to light much currently unrecognized white-collar crime. Whistle-blowing must be incorporated into crime prevention in a way that rewards social responsibility.

A larger proportion of these crimes could be prosecuted as conspiracy with the same penalties. This involves less risk to the public than only reacting once the crime had been committed. There is a major potential improvement in public safety if the police are aware of the planned crime before it happens.

The advent of AI as an intermediary in the initial contact and subsequent reporting phase can establish a far likelier cordon around the information and subsequent surveillance, which in turn provides potentially far more confirmation of the truth of the original report.

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 (Return to the [[manifesto]])
-#Civil unrest, riot and insurrection
-##    As has been the case in this country for centuries, the civil authority may demand immediate support from the armed forces and place those responding units under police command.
-#Police
+=== Enhancing Public Safety and Disempowering Organized Crime ===
-##Police accountability
-###    It will be a criminal offence for any police officer to be on duty in a public setting without a switched-on sealed and archived bodycam and sound recorder accessible by court order, or for any such record to be destroyed.
+==== Introduction ====
-##What the police are for
+Our manifesto is committed to better resourcing of policing to allow them to focus on critical social priorities, including public safety and protecting the rights of women to a safe environment. We recognize the need to disrupt organized crime and improve the effectiveness of law enforcement through innovative policy changes.
-##The police proactively minimize crime: intelligence-led policing
-##The police reactively minimize crime: responding to reported crime
+==== Key Objectives ====
-##Crime is minimized if the police promptly investigate all reported crime, promptly identify everyone responsible and promptly bring them before a court to be successfully convicted.
-##We will expand police surveillance resources to detect and interrupt crime, and to help investigate reported crime. We regard privacy as less important than effective policing.
+# '''Disempowering Organized Crime through Legalization of Narcotics'''
-##The government help to minimize crime by decriminalizing some actions
+#* '''Decriminalization''': Legalize the manufacture, sale, and consumption of all classes of narcotics to undercut the black market.
-###We will decriminalize the importation, manufacture, retailing, possession and use of narcotic drugs. We note that the SNP followed this manifesto commitment by adopting it in July 2023, while the Conservative Westminster government blocked implementation of their declared intention.
+#* '''Health and Safety''': Improve health outcomes and significantly reduce drug-related deaths through quality control at the point of sale.
-###We will tax the sale of narcotic drugs with similar excise rules currently applied to tobacco and alcohol, applying similar quality control law and responsible use requirements to the industry. The focus on the use of recreational drugs should be safety, not prosecution.
+#* '''Public Health Initiatives''': Continue and enhance public health initiatives to dissuade substance abuse, particularly focusing on vulnerable populations.
-###We believe this policy will remove criminal involvement from the entire existing drugs chain, and not before time. Criminalizing any activity generates a greater workload on the police, who have more urgent tasks than refereeing county-lines gang activity.
+# '''Reforming the Use of King's Evidence'''
-#Sentencing after conviction
+#* '''Enhanced Whistle-Blower Protections''': Reform and extend the use of King's Evidence to encourage lawful cooperation with police.
-##Current sentencing law is directed toward a range of contradictory goals:
+#* '''Secure Reporting Channels''': Establish guaranteed secure channels for informants to report criminal activity safely.
-##*Retribution
+#* '''AI Integration''': Utilize AI technology to protect informants and enhance the accuracy and security of information provided to law enforcement.
-##*Deterrence of the convict
+# '''Focusing Policing Resources on Public Safety'''
-##*Deterrence of the general public
+#* '''Targeted Law Enforcement''': Redirect police resources from enforcing drug prohibition to tackling more serious crimes, including personal violence, and corruption.
-##*Denunciation
+#* '''Women's Safety''': Prioritize the protection of women, ensuring they have a safe environment free from violence and harassment.
-##*Incapacitation
+#* '''Community Policing''': Invest in community policing initiatives to build trust and cooperation between law enforcement and local communities.
-##*Rehabilitation
-##*Reparation
+==== Detailed Proposals ====
-##We will focus sentencing policy on maximizing rehabilitation. As a working definition, a rehabilitated convict will be no more likely to offend than any other citizen.
-##Remorse and reparation are important aspects of rehabilitation.
+# '''Legalization of Narcotics'''
-##Imprisonment as punishment clearly has little value to society.
+#* '''Economic Impact''': Legalizing narcotics will reduce the profitability of organized crime by eliminating the black market for drugs.
-##Imprisonment, tagging or monitoring to protect society before a potentially dangerous prisoner has successfully been rehabilitated offers a safe environment where necessary.
+#* '''Quality Control''': Regulate the production and sale of narcotics to ensure product safety, reducing health risks associated with unregulated substances.
-##We will introduce effective voluntary therapy to enable cooperative convicts to re-engage with society at the earliest opportunity, contingent on their continuing successful participation in a rehabilitation program. We believe the new cost-effective factor enabling this process is the ongoing development of such AI therapy and evaluation programs, which we will fund as an alternative to the current scale of the prison service.
+#* '''Tax Revenue''': Generate tax revenue from the sale of narcotics, which can be reinvested in public health, education, and addiction support services.
-##We will extend the engagement of AI on the basis of results.
+# '''Reforming King's Evidence'''
-###If AI proves to be more capable of rehabilitating volunteers than existing methods, AI will become the preferred system.
+#* '''Legal Framework''': Create a legal framework that allows individuals to report criminal offers safely and lawfully.
-###Similarly for evaluating progress and determining outcome.
+#* '''Rewards for Informants''': Implement a reward system for informants who provide valuable information leading to convictions, including a judge’s thanks and financial incentives.
-##The downside of rehabilitation
+#* '''AI and Surveillance''': Deploy AI to manage initial contacts and subsequent reporting, ensuring the security and reliability of the information provided.
-###There is an elephant in the room, which is a massive extension of monitoring and mental coercion of citizens at the hands of the state.
+# '''Enhancing Policing for Public Safety'''
-###If a large proportion of convicts meet the criteria for early release - if the intervention of AI is as successful as seems likely - some governments, on the basis of past behaviour, will simply keep the prison population high by expanding the range of offences through legislation. Prisons will continue to be filled, the turnover of the population through the penal system will increase, the remedial interventions will become more and more prone to conditioning by the state.
+#* '''Resource Allocation''': Allocate police resources more effectively by focusing on preventing and responding to serious crimes.
-###It is difficult at the moment to see how this can be prevented over the long term. It needs, somehow, to be systemically prevented from the start. Suggestions would be very welcome, as with anything else discussed by the party.
+#* '''Women's Safety Initiatives''': Develop and fund programs specifically aimed at protecting women from violence and ensuring their safety in public and private spaces.
+#* '''Community Engagement''': Strengthen community policing efforts to foster stronger relationships between police and the communities they serve, enhancing overall safety and trust.
+==== Strategic Recommendations ====
+# '''Holistic Policy Approach'''
+#* '''Integrated Strategies''': Ensure that policies on narcotics, public safety, and crime prevention are integrated and mutually reinforcing.
+#* '''Collaborative Efforts''': Work with public health officials, community leaders, and international partners to implement comprehensive solutions.
+# '''Public Communication and Education'''
+#* '''Transparency''': Maintain transparent communication with the public about the benefits and rationale behind these policy changes.
+#* '''Education Campaigns''': Launch education campaigns to inform the public about the new legal framework for narcotics, the importance of whistle-blowing, and community safety initiatives.
+# '''Monitoring and Evaluation'''
+#* '''Data-Driven Policies''': Implement systems to monitor and evaluate the outcomes of these policy changes, making data-driven adjustments as necessary.
+#* '''Continuous Improvement''': Ensure continuous feedback from stakeholders to improve the effectiveness of public safety and crime prevention strategies.
+=== Conclusion ===
+Our manifesto commitment to better resourcing of policing aims to enhance public safety, particularly protecting women's rights to a safe environment, and to disempower organized crime through innovative legal and policy reforms. By legalizing narcotics, reforming King's Evidence, and focusing policing resources on more significant social priorities, we can build a safer, more just, and inclusive society.
+==== The war on drugs ====
+Much crime is organized to profit from illegal import and sale where legal commerce cannot compete.
+To limit these illegal opportunities we will decriminalize in particular the manufacture, sale and consumption of all classes of narcotics.
+The resulting quality at the point of sale will improve health outcomes and reduce deaths significantly, while organized criminal recruitment and involvement in drug distribution will be a thing of the past.
+The most lethal drug of choice, alcohol, has never been banned and will continue to kill more people and lead to more antisocial behaviour than all these decriminalized drugs put together ever have. We will continue  public health initiatives to dissuade vulnerable users from substance abuse.
+==== Supporting whistleblowers ====
+We will reform and extend the use of King's Evidence, and in particular the policing of corruption. Anyone approached with an offer of criminal profit should be lawfully able to immediately and enthusiastically agree, contingent on his then giving heads-up notification to a guaranteed secure channel into police intelligence. Continuing to forward information should result in the informant getting the judge's thanks and a proportionate reward from the public purse when the schemers are found guilty in court.
+This isn't encouraging people to participate in crime, it's what any reasonable citizen would do were the risk of being taken for a criminal, or exposed to danger as an informer, not the deterrent it currently must be. It would, among other things, bring to light much currently unrecognized white-collar crime. Whistle-blowing must be incorporated into crime prevention in a way that rewards social responsibility.
+A larger proportion of these crimes could be prosecuted as conspiracy with the same penalties. This involves less risk to the public than only reacting once the crime had been committed. There is a major potential improvement in public safety if the police are aware of the planned crime before it happens.
+The advent of AI as an intermediary in the initial contact and subsequent reporting phase can establish a far likelier cordon around the information and subsequent surveillance, which in turn provides potentially far more confirmation of the truth of the original report.