Heroin addict stole £35million in decades-long crime spree as ‘powerful love’ punishment expanded
EXCLUSIVE: Deputy PM David Lammy – who is also the Justice Secretary – is unveiling plans to double the number of Intensive Supervision Courts to cut reoffending and improve family relationships
David Lammy has announced a major expansion of “tough love” problem-solving courts to steer women away from a life of crime(Image: Emma Trimble / SWNS)
David Lammy has announced a major expansion of “tough love” problem-solving courts to steer women away from a life of crime.
The deputy PM – who is also the Justice Secretary – is unveiling plans to double the number of Intensive Supervision Courts (ISC) to cut reoffending and improve family relationships.
ISCs force offenders to attend weekly sessions and regularly appear before the same judge who will track their behaviour. Failure to attend meetings can be punished with prison. There are currently five ISCs across the country but a £9million funding boost will take this figure to 11 by 2029, with a total of six to be dedicated to women.
In an interview with The Mirror, Mr Lammy said the ISCs are in no way easier than prison sentences but are a form of “punishment that works”. He said: “There’s nothing easy about being gripped by a judge, having to meet the obligations to attend alcohol or drug addiction supervision, knowing that if you slip up, you are going to go to prison and you could serve 28 days, for example, in prison… This is not easy. It’s actually quite tough. Some might call it tough love.”
Studies show how more than two thirds of women in custody report being victims of domestic abuse, while roughly half have drug addictions.
Mr Lammy said there will always be a place for some women to go to jail – such as those who commit sexual or violent crime – but emphasised that many female offenders are victims of domestic abuse or have mental health, drug or alcohol problems.
Asked if people should have more sympathy for the reasons people get tied up in crime, Mr Lammy said: “I think that what the public want to see, understandably, if you’ve committed a crime, is punishment, but they also want to see rehabilitation, and so I tend to talk about punishment that works, and the emphasis on works is important.
“It really isn’t good for taxpayers’ money or good for victims of crime if people experience the criminal justice system and then go on to reoffend and reoffending rates are running at about 67% often in this area, so we need to get that figure down. The intensive supervision courts are a key plank of reducing reoffending that is cost-effective.”
ISCs are inspired by Texas’s justice system, where the approach has contributed to a 29% drop in crime.
Keeley Knowles, 43, a former heroin addict who stole £35million worth of designer products and other items over decades of prolific shoplifting, is one example of how the targeted ISC system can work. Keeley, who said she was seen as “beyond help”, went to jail 28 times in the UK but it did not break her cycle of crime and drug-taking.
“Going to prison puts you on pause and then you come back out the exact same,” she said. “Every single time I got out of jail, I would hit their local shopping centre on the way home, already planning what I was getting, what I was going to sell.”
But after a two-year ISC order in Birmingham, which came to an end in March, her life has completely transformed and now she campaigns on justice issues. “This is different because it wasn’t just turning up at probation once a week, and someone ticking a box to say that you turned up, but not paying any interest in what you’re actually doing…
“The ISC looks at all the things that you need help with and it will make sure that you get them and you don’t get forgotten at the bottom of a pile of names. It’s all personalised and it’s not got one formula for one per for like everybody, everybody gets their own treatment right.”
“I used to be some junkie that you’d see in the street, no teeth, no nothing, that nobody paid attention to,” she added. “Now I go everywhere. I go to Westminster to talk; to the Old Bailey. I do events for massive security companies, police crime commissioners. I couldn’t have imagined that my life would be what it is now, not back then.”
Vulnerable offenders are often supported through their ISC orders by women’s centres, which can host probation, substance misuse and counselling sessions.
Emma Page, who was given an ISC order and was supported to complete it at Anawim women’s centre in Birmingham, said the targeted court has helped her turn her life around. “I don’t even know where I’d be. I probably would be in prison or dead,” she said. “It’s made me realise I am worth a bit, I’m not judged, I’m not the only one.”
Emma, 46, who assaulted a police officer when drunk not long after her dad’s death, was told to take a three-month alcohol programme and complete 12 weeks of counselling. She now wants to volunteer at the centre to help other people like her.
Calling for continued funding to support ISCs, she said: “I think the country needs it. I think the whole of Britain needs it because it will save the room and the money from the prisons and reoffending. Here, you have support, you’re outside (of jail) and you can still be free and go forward and progress in your life.
“If you were in prison, it’d be, I don’t know, aggression and whatever, you ain’t gonna care, because as soon as you come out, you’re going to go back to where you were, and a lot of men and women do that.”
