Jailed rioters need help to turn their lives around, says Boris Johnson

Testifying before home affairs committee investigation into last month’s riots, mayor of London says those jailed for their part in disturbances must not be abandoned in prison London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, has said the huge number of people jailed after the riots cannot be abandoned in prison, and must be helped to turn their lives around. Testifying before the home affairs committee investigation into last month’s riots, which blighted 22 out of the capital’s 32 boroughs, Johnson said the cost to London alone was around £75m. He agreed with the justice secretary, Ken Clarke, who wrote a Guardian article blaming a “feral underclass” which a broken prison system had failed to rehabilitate. Johnson told MPs that with more than 2,000 people arrested and more than 1,000 convicted in London alone, it was vital that in prison everything was done to help those convicted turn their lives around. “One thing I do think the justice secretary is right to highlight is the importance, if you arrest such a huge number of people as we have and you put them into the criminal justice system, then you cannot simply abandon them there, you have to make sure they are educated in there.” Johnson said that 75% of those arrested had criminal records, while 83% had previous contact with police: “What was going to make you more likely to riot? It was previous contact with the police, and that’s the problem that we need to tackle.” The prime minister, David Cameron, lay great stress on gangs being behind the riots. But Johnson said just 20% of the 2,300 arrested so far had gang affiliations. The Conservative mayor, who faces a battle for re-election next year, said police were not asking to use weapons such as baton rounds and water cannon, and he dismissed the notion floated by Cameron that social media could be blocked in the event of future disturbances. Johnson said monitoring such sites helped police to gather intelligence. He said London had brought a high level of violence and disorder under control within days, while other cities such as Paris had failed to quell their riots for months. The mayor praised the leadership of the Metropolitan police and told the committee chairman, Keith Vaz, that the violence had surprised him and police chiefs. Johnson said: “It is self-evident, Mr Vaz, that there was a difficulty, there was a crisis on the Saturday, Sunday, Monday evenings, that caught everyone unawares. There is no doubt about that.” Johnson left the committee hearing to take part in interviews for the vacant post of Metropolitan police commissioner. The mayor said the four candidates were outstanding and the new head of Scotland Yard would be announced on Monday. Tim Godwin, the acting Met commissioner, is one of those candidates and he told the home affairs committee he wished he had more officers on duty when the first riots erupted in Tottenham, north London, on a Saturday evening, before spreading across the capital on Sunday and Monday evenings. “Sometimes you realise how thin the blue line is,” Godwin said, referring to the famous phrase about British policing. Rejecting calls for a change in the style of British policing, Godwin said the debate after the riots would have been different if people had been left in hospital after being seriously injured by baton rounds: “I take pride in the fact that we filled up prison places instead of hospital beds, and I think that’s the British way,” Godwin said. Godwin has worked on trying to slash the reoffending rates, and he told MPs he agreed with Clarke’s comments in the Guardian: “I think this is a wake-up call for the criminal justice system. “We have in London been seeking to speed up justice, make it more relevant, make it more relevant to communities, and that’s something that we need to do. “The amount of people who have previous convictions does pose questions for us.” Godwin said the speedy arrests and jailing of offenders had helped deter any repeat of the riots, and police revealed 500 officers were still working on hunting down the looters and that 20,000 hours of CCTV footage still had to be viewed. UK riots Boris Johnson Prisons and probation London Crime London politics Metropolitan police Police Vikram Dodd guardian.co.uk

Posted by on September 6, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.