The British National Party will end the culture where criminals’ rights are placed above those of victims of crime.
The following is the complete section on law and order from the BNP’s 2010 election manifesto, previously only available in PDF format.
Time to Get Tough on Crime and Criminals
Removing the Politically Correct Straitjacket from the Police
Despite unprecedented sums spent on the police, Britain today faces record criminality levels.
Police have been removed from the community. Traditional and effective bobby-on-the-beat policing has been abandoned in favour of ‘Community Support Officers’, patrol cars and expensive and intrusive technological devices such as CCTV.
Police management has lost its focus on preventing crime and has become subjected to politically correct social work, more concerned with the rights and ethnicity of criminals than with the rights of victims.
This has particularly been the case since the Macpherson Report — a prejudicial, politically correct, left-leaning statement which wrought great damage to traditional policing.
We intend to rebuild the social contract where the criminal was afraid of the police and upright citizens were protected by the law.
The liberal consensus which confuses the criminal with the victim will be abolished.
Politically correct senior police officers will be axed.
The BNP shall:
- Ensure that the police’s priority be returned to the prevention and detection of crime.
- Return, so far as practicality permits, to traditional foot and cycle patrols.
- Reintroduce corporal punishment in instances of vicious criminality and assault.
- Reintroduce capital punishment for child murderers, multiple murderers, murderers of policemen on duty and terrorists where guilt is beyond all doubt.
- Examine, carefully, the merits of ‘Restorative Justice,’ where fines imposed by the courts are given in whole or in part to the victims. Criminals will be forced to repair damage wrought in the community.
- Review the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE), which introduced an unacceptable tier of bureaucracy on the police in terms of form-filling.
- Examine, carefully, the argument that families should bear financial responsibility for the cost of crimes committed by those of their children beneath the age of 18. This deterrent would curtail the misconduct of young vandals and criminals. We are wary of the conditions where millions live in fear of crime, much of which is committed by a relatively small number of serial offenders who have little fear of the criminal justice system.
- Reintroduce traditional police uniforms and phase out the paramilitary costumes that have undermined this powerful symbol of traditional unarmed civil authority. The police are the servants of the people, not the servants of the state.
- Reintroduce the right of householders to defend themselves and their property using whatever means they deem necessary.
- We shall also examine the culture of law enforcement. To this extent, we believe it is proper that adults in a community may, on rare occasions, discipline badly behaved children (subject, of course, to common-sense interpretations of Common Law).
- Ensure criminals serve their full sentences, with time added for bad conduct. Early release, embracing 25 percent of the prison sentence, will be permitted in return for a clear demonstration of the acquisition of genuinely useful skills or full rehabilitation in the case of drug addicts. Parole Boards shall possess the authority to release such model prisoners, if necessary by electronic tagging.
- Substantially increase the provision for drug rehabilitation. An investment of this nature will be justified in terms of helping to negate the link between drug use, addiction and criminality.
- Introduce the death penalty for the large-scale dealing of hard drugs, when proven beyond all doubt.
- Establish a penal station for hardened and repeat criminals on the British island of South Georgia. To prevent corruption, the prison governor will be changed every six months and will not qualify to serve a further term for three years. The prisoners will be used to construct modern port facilities, suitable for fishing vessels.
- Introduce physical labour into the prison service, in return for remission for good conduct. To this extent, there are numerous areas where electronically-tagged physical labour is required.
Two immediate areas include the urgent re-construction of sea defences and, secondly, the placement of fibre-optic cabling in the rural community. These facilities, provided by the Prison Service, will produce a welcome source of revenue.