The Criminal Justice Bill had its second reading on Tuesday (28 November).

The Bill was a key announcement in this year’s King’s Speech. It seeks to keep communities safe by strengthening laws, equipping law enforcement agencies with the necessary powers to address emerging crime types and threats, introducing tougher sentencing, enhancing the management of offenders; and strengthening public confidence in policing.

The government’s has a zero-tolerance approach to crime and anti-social behaviour and this Bill seeks to strength this. Since 2010, successive governments have made enormous strides on cracking down on criminals and imposing the toughest sentences for the most serious offenders. Due to these efforts, crime has fallen significantly since 2010. Overall crime, measured on a like for like basis, has decreased by 56%.

The Bill includes a range of measures:

1. Tougher action on knife crime. Enhancing the ability of law enforcement agencies to clamp down on knife crime.
    
2. Tougher action on drugs. Expanding police powers to drug test more suspects on arrest, helping direct more drug users into treatment and away from drugs.
    
3. Tackling anti-social behaviour. Giving the police and others stronger powers to tackle the anti-social behaviour that blights communities and strengthening the accountability of community safety partnerships.
    
4. Pursuing all reasonable lines of enquiry. Create a new targeted power for the police to enter premises to search for and seize stolen goods.
    
5. New powers to tackle serious and organised crime. Prohibiting articles used in serious crime, banning electronic devices such as signal jammers used in vehicle theft, and strengthening the operation of Serious Crime Prevention Orders.
    
6. Tougher sentences. Imprisoning for longer those who represent the greatest risk to society. Introducing statutory aggravating factors at sentencing that ensure the punishment better fits the crime.
    
7. Strengthening the supervision of offenders in the community. The bill will give probation officers the power to polygraph test more serious offenders who have committed sexual or terrorism motivated crimes.
    
8. Tacking violence against women and girls. Creating new offences criminalising the taking of intimate images and expanding the offence of encouraging or assisting serious self-harm to cover non-communication activity.
    
9. Ensuring victims see justice delivered. We are creating a new power for judges to order an offender to attend their hearings, with up to two years behind bars for those who refuse.
    
10. Increase prison capacity. To ensure we always have enough prison places to protect the public and serve the order of the court, this bill will establish powers to allow adult prisoners in England and Wales to be transferred to rented prisons overseas. This is in addition to our programme to build 20,000 new prison places, the biggest prison build since the Victorian era.

I know how important it is for us locally that we feel safe in our communities. I am confident that this Bill will make a real difference to people’s lives and I look forward to following its progress through Parliament.