- guardian.co.uk, Friday 30 June 2000 15.20 BST
The whole area involves not just long-term thinking, but also a very wide range of different agencies. The manifesto must say how it will pull together the efforts of all the different agencies.
More "bobbies on the beat", supplementing the use of constables with police-approved community patrol officers, and the regulation of the private security industry are fine. But their effectiveness needs to be sharply reviewed.
To continue to criminalise soft drugs, but alleviate the penalties looks like a halfway house, and seem unlikely to be either effective or acceptable. Many people would have trouble with the idea that judges should explain publicly their reasons for passing particular sentences and, in practice, a better way forward is likely to be an improved system of appeals.
On prisons, certainly the government should promise more, but cost constraints may tell. There is no reason why the government should not let the public sector bid to run all new prisons.
So far as asylum seekers go, clearly more effective liaison between agencies, here and abroad, is needed. Merging the commission for racial equality with the equal opportunities commission raises the question of whether the disabilities and grievances suffered by women and various minority groups - ethnic minorities, gays and so on - are sufficiently similar for a single commission to command acceptance, and whether "one size suits all" is appropriate.
