Reasons not to be cheerful: New Labour's action plan for targeting violence

Abstract

It was always going to be interesting to see which direction the New Labour Administration under Gordon Brown would take on crime, and with the publication of ‘Saving Lives, Reducing Harm and Protecting the Public’, subtitled ‘an action plan for tackling violence 2008–11’, we get to find out (HM Government, 2008). The omens are not propitious, the rightward drift continues and in the direction of a technocratic, administrative criminology wholly devoid of social content and context.

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Simon Hallsworth

Director of London Metropolitan University's Centre for Social Evaluation and Research