Transfer to the UK

Of considerable interest is the path that ZTP took in the UK when it crossed the Atlantic. The UK appeared to be the western European state closest to the US in relation to ‘toughness’ in criminal justice, and the natural ally in the UK was the Conservative Party. Originally under Margaret Thatcher and from 1979 onwards, it had played the ‘law and order’ card. Conservative views were later typified by the statement in 1997, by the then Home Secretary Michael Howard, that ‘prison works’. Howard was suggesting that the threat of long sentences for serious crime has a deterrent effect; informed opinion would not support this and would certainly not support the view that ‘prison works’. But such populist and ideologically drenched soundbites that ignore the evidence but have wide populist appeal reflect the ‘no-nonsense’ tone of the debate in Britain (Downes and Morgan, 1997).

‘Law and order’ became a staple of political party debate from the 1979 election onwards, with increasing media attention while the Conservatives endeavoured to pillory Labour for being ‘soft’ on crime. In the 1990s, this led to an ‘anything you can do, I can do tougher’ stance, with law and order politics becoming ‘a dominant discourse of the age: the “culture of control”’ (Reiner, 2006, p 133). The Labour Party in opposition wanted to rid itself of that ‘soft’, liberal image. In 1996, Shadow Home Secretary Jack Straw launched a blistering attack on the Home Office and spoke of the ‘crisis overwhelming the criminal justice system’. He maintained that more crimes were being committed and more people ‘are getting away with it … we have to ensure more offenders are caught and convicted’ (Rose, 2006). Labour had brazenly stolen the Conservatives’ clothes while they were swimming.