Crime

1. Civil unrest, riot and insurrection
   1. 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.
2. Police
   1. The police exist to minimize crime.
   2. 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.
   3. We will decriminalize some actions.
      1. We will decriminalize the importation, manufacture, retailing, possession and use of narcotic drugs.
      2. 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.
      3. 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.
3. Intelligence-led Policing
   1. 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.
   2. We will also expand police surveillance resources to detect and interrupt crime, and to help investigate reported crime. We regard privacy as less important than effective policing.
4. Sentencing
   1. Current sentencing policy is directed toward a range of contradictory goals:
      • Retribution
      • Deterrence of the convict
      • Deterrence of the general public
      • Denunciation
      • Incapacitation
      • Rehabilitation
      • Reparation
   2. We will focus sentencing policy on maximizing rehabilitation. A rehabilitated convict will never re-offend. Reparation is an important aspect of rehabilitation.
   3. Imprisonment as punishment clearly has little value to society. Imprisonment to protect society before a potentially dangerous prisoner has successfully been rehabilitated offers a safe environment where necessary.
   4. We will introduce effective therapy to enable cooperative convicts to re-engage with society at the earliest opportunity, contingent on their successful participation in the 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.