Letting drug dealers out of prison to go on spa breaks is criminally stupid

These teenagers are first tempted – with drugs or money. Then they are groomed. Then they are bullied, abused and terrorised into working as drugs mules. It is years now that this so-called “county lines” operation has been a national disgrace; and now the runners have helped to found commercial colonies.

The gangs have put down roots in the towns and communities they have entered, and those gangs have been clashing with other gangs. That is partly why there has been a horrific increase in knife crime not just in London, but also in places that barely knew the phenomenon. When they are caught, the kids are so terrified that they refuse to break the omertá. When they are sent to jail, they wait until they can come out again and rejoin the gang. As things stand, we have 59 per cent of young offenders committing a fresh crime within a year of their release.

For tens of thousands of young people – perhaps hundreds of thousands – these drugs kingpins are the wreckers of their lives. It is utterly bewildering that we should permit the bosses to be cosseted in spas during their prison sentences, when young people are literally dying in the street in the furtherance of their criminal objectives.

We need to turn this thing around, and we can. We need to recognise, first, that there are some ways in which our criminal justice system is too Dickensian. Some of our jails are squalid. There is far too much violence among prisoners, and far too many suicides. Our prison service does a valiant and often heroic job – managing the largest number of inmates in Europe – but there is hardly any real attempt, or capacity, to re-educate and to reform.

So, yes, there are certainly some ways in which we need to be more progressive in our handling of criminals; and yet there are plenty of other ways in which I am afraid our system is simply far too soft.

It is outrageous that murderers are let out only to murder again, as has happened on at least a dozen occasions in the past 10 years. I could not believe that earlier this month a convicted rapist was out on early release, only to allegedly commit several more rapes almost immediately.

What is going on with these parole boards? One has the impression that they are simple slaves to political correctness, and unaccountable for the risks they take with public safety. It is becoming more and more regular for prisoners to be let out early – even when they have been convicted of the most serious and violent crimes.

We need a two-pronged approach. We should do whatever we can to divert kids from crime, and to prevent recidivism, and to get young ex-offenders immediately into work. There are plenty of companies that do a fantastic job in taking on young people who have served their sentences – Timpson, the shoe repair firm, springs to mind. Others could do far more.

Much more importantly, I am afraid, we need to crack the problem of the gangs by backing the police to do the jobs they signed up to do. We should be encouraging more stop and search, which declined yet again last year, while knife crime went up – and when Jeremy Corbyn and his kind protest and say that we shouldn’t be tough on those who carry knives, we should respond very fiercely indeed.

As a procedure, stop and search is not racist or discriminatory. In fact there is nothing kinder or more loving you can do when you see a young kid who may be carrying a knife than to ask him to turn out his pockets. You are not only helping to save the lives of others; you may be saving the life of the young person himself. It was by that mixture of engagement with young people and tough policing that we were able to cut crime in London by almost 20 per cent when I was mayor. Thanks partly to stop and search, we cut the murder rate by 50 per cent, and virtually every other crime type came down.

And to back up the police, you not only need proper resources, but also tough sentencing. It’s no use asking the police to make arrests if the courts and the parole boards are too lenient. We need to root out the Leftist culture of so much of the criminal justice establishment. Why, for heaven’s sake, has the prime minister appointed the Tory-baiting former Labour MP, Vera Baird, as the new Victims’ Commissioner? Will she really represent the anger of the victims – or the orthodoxies of the system?

When we catch a serious criminal, a man causing indirect destruction to the lives of thousands, then we do not simply let him out early, or allow him to laugh in the faces of his victims by being pictured on some luxury weekend break of pampering and aquariums.

When men like him are allowed to visit Sea Life Centres, we have the wrong sharks in captivity.

CORRECTION: This article, now amended, originally stated that Luke Jewitt "was pushing huge quantities of cocaine and cannabis on to the streets". Mr Jewitt was in fact cleared of charges relating to cannabis, and was convicted of conspiracy to supply 3 kg of cocaine. We are happy to clarify. 

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