News from The Labour Party

Labour’s Justice Secretary welcomes one million hours of visible community service

Jack Straw MP, Labour’s Justice Secretary has welcomed news that more than one million hours of physical work has been undertaken by offenders wearing high visibility orange jackets since the scheme was launched in December.

Figures released for the first quarter of this year show more than one million hours of work has been undertaken by offenders wearing the high-visibility jackets.

Branded high-visibility jackets were launched in December last year for offenders to wear while carrying out work on Community Payback. The roll-out of the new jackets across England and Wales builds on a recommendation from Neighbourhood Crime and Justice Adviser Louise Casey’s review, “Engaging Communities in Fighting Crime”, published in June last year, which outlined the importance of local communities being able to see that crime is being tackled in their local area, and justice is being done.

Jack Straw MP, Labour’s Justice Secretary said:

“This is part of Labour’s drive to further reform the criminal justice system so that justice is not only done, but clearly seen to be done.

“We are bringing in tougher and more visible Community Payback schemes so that local communities can see that crime is being tackled in their local area.

“Labour believes justice should be seen to be done. The Tories and Liberal Democrats believe that measures aimed at helping communities to see justice being done are ‘gimmicks’. Time and again they attack us for putting law-abiding communities first.

“Community sentences are a crucial part of our approach to providing a justice system which provides both punishment and reform. Often, for less serious offenders, they are more effective than a short prison sentence. But we need to do more to show the public that they work, in order to increase confidence in them.

“They provide benefit to society by making people ‘pay back’ communities for the damage they have caused. This is done through hard work, with no pay to make communities safer and better places to live.”

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