Oh Big Brother, Where Art Thou?
It's 2018 and the end of the second ten-year drug strategy. During that time, the strategy had become so focused on dealing with Prolific and Priority Offenders who use drugs, that eventually one heroin user was charged with all the remaining acquisitive crime in the UK. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in one of the new rehabs located on an abandoned North Sea oil rig and subject to 24 hour surveillance by an 80-strong security team. Thus the final link between drugs and crime was broken and Number 10 breathed a sigh of relief. But how was this achieved?
Simple really. Compulsory CCTV in all homes and the mandatory inclusion of everybody's fingerprints, handprints, iris patterns, voice recognition and DNA samples on the central database known as GOTCHA (GOvernment Tracking of Citizen Harm Agency) supplemented by Tag on Arrest for all offences including putting the wrong rubbish in a recycling bin and making unkind remarks about speed cameras. All of which might be a law and order politician's wet dream: the Saturday Guardian (31st March) highlighted what is the waking nightmare of our prison system stuffed as it is with those suffering mental health and drug problems.
The Guardian interviewed Stephen Rimmer, the current Director of Strategy for the Met Police, in his capacity as a former prison governor. But he had a key role to play in the recent history of British drug policy overlooked in the article. As Head of the Central Drugs Coordinating Unit (CDCU) under the last Conservative Government, he was a key architect of what became Labour's ten year drug strategy.
The CDCU was a brave experiment in trying to make government drugs policy cross-departmental in recognition of the fact that dealing with drugs is not just about criminal justice. It was a point underscored this week by Sir Stephen Lander, Chairman of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), in defending SOCA on the anniversary of its formation, from mounting criticism of its performance especially in relation to stemming the flow of drugs into the UK. But in fairness to SOCA, while acknowledging the dedication of the officers at the sharp end, none of its predecessors have done any better. For many years the enforcement agencies have openly acknowledged the small percentage of drugs seized in comparison with what comes in while those at the very top of the distribution chain and their assets appear fireproof.
The CDCU morphed into the drug czar's office, but the whole edifice was swept away by Whitehall intrigues allowing the Home Office to seize back control of drugs policy - a portfolio it is destined to hang onto if the shake-up of the department is confirmed. Rather than sitting with the new Ministry of Justice whose brief includes the prevention of re-offending, drugs will be closely tied into 'external threat' issues such as security, terrorism and illegal immigration.
Those who worked with Stephen Rimmer at the CDCU acknowledge him as a thoughtful and compassionate man. It is unlikely that he would have wanted the policy he helped create serve only to further demonise those with drug problems. However looking at the extent to which law and order issues have come to dominate the policy discourse and the implications of the proposed reorganisation of the Home Office, it is hard to come to any other conclusion.
