No one should feel unsafe walking the streets, but unfortunately some people do. For far too long decent people in this country have been victims of violent crime, and time and again we see those violent criminals given paltry sentences and released early, so that they are back on the streets to wreak havoc and create misery. Unfortunately, some people cannot live by the rules of our society. They must therefore be taken to a place that has different rules, and that place is prison.
In Ashfield, people are fed up with violent crime. They are fed up with seeing violent criminals get short sentences, and then leave prison halfway through their sentences. I will tell you who else is fed up. Our police are fed up. They have a difficult enough job as it is, apprehending the most violent criminals in our society. As my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) said earlier, they must be really angry to see violent criminals released early and back out on the
streets—and guess what? Our police are then having to waste time and resources catching those criminals and putting them back through the system.
It is not rocket science. If you lock up a serious offender for 10 years instead of five, that is five more years when they are no longer a threat or a risk to society. It gives them five more years to reflect on their crimes, and it gives us five more years to rehabilitate the most serious and violent offenders in this country. I welcome this statutory instrument. I also welcome the fact that we are recruiting 20,000 extra police officers and creating 10,000 more prison places, as well as locking up our most serious offenders for longer. That will not only make our streets safer but restore confidence in our justice system.
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