Rough Justice

I like the idea of Rough Justice as the title of the new Spider Shepherd book, but the master Jack Higgins used it last year! My thinking cap is still on!

This just in from the chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales. The new book is about vigilante cops, police officers who are fed up with the criminal justice system, so what Paul McKeever has to say fits in really well with what I'm writing.

The Government has created a "hokey cokey" criminal justice system that fails to tackle persistent offenders, the leader of rank and file police officers has said.

Paul McKeever, chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said officers are "sick to death" of seeing the same criminals again and again.

He told Home Secretary Jacqui Smith at the Federation's annual conference in Bournemouth how many officers view her with "real suspicion and distrust" after a series of clashes over pay, pensions and workplace reform.

He said: "It's in out, in out, let all the prisoners out. In out, in out, shake the system about."

Mr McKeever branded the belief that constant modernisation and reshaping of the police will solve crime more effectively as a "big lie".

He said: "We and the people we serve are being failed by the rest of the criminal justice system.

"A criminal justice system that isn't working and is seen by many people as being there to protect offenders' interests above the interests of law-abiding members of the public.

"Rather than addressing the real problem of ineffective sanctions, ineffective education programmes and ineffective rehabilitation the focus is on us, the police, to detect the same people more often and bring them before the courts again and again."

Mr McKeever said police are left in a "constant state of flux" as politicians constantly demand change.

He added: "This means we will never be left alone as we can never be seen as fit for purpose, otherwise politicians would themselves have to be answerable to the electorate as to why crime goes on being committed.

"In effect, in the eyes of politicians, the police are the problem that needs to be solved, when the reality is that it is the criminals who are the problem and we are the solution."