Introduction

A lot can happen in five years: the Conservative Party manifesto for the 2010 general election insisted that ‘Britain needs change’, and went on to claim that our ‘communities are shattered by crime and abuse’ (Conservative Party, 2010, p vii). Given such an urgent clarion call in 2010, it is fascinating how far explicit discussion of crime, disorder and criminal justice had slipped from the front lines of party-political concern by 2015. The 2015 Conservative manifesto did not begin any discussion of crime until page 58, in a section headed ‘Fighting crime and standing up for victims’. The Labour Party's discussion of crime, on page 51, referred to addressing crime and anti-social behaviour, and was set in the context of the insecurities facing families and communities, themes that had been set by the Blairite ‘tough on crime’ agenda (Labour Party, 2015). The Liberal Democrat discussion of law-and-order matters had to wait until page 117, where it comprised a number of fairly routine pronouncements on ‘secure communities, Policing and Justice, and the Border Force’ (Liberal Democrats, 2015, p 117). In five years of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government, therefore, law, order and criminal justice had apparently slipped from the front page to a back burner. Of course, consistently falling rates of reported and recorded crime may be part of an explanation for the ‘dog that ceased to bark’, except that this particular dog had fallen relatively silent despite the fact that a number of high-profile law-and-order issues had arisen during the government's term.

Some similar shifts were also reflected in government spending on law, order and protective services. According to Garside and Ford, for the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies:

The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicted that over the period 2010/11 to 2015/16, Home Office spending would have fallen by 24.9% and that of the Ministry of Justice by 34.3%.