Farage says Reform will halve crime in Britain. Here’s why his policies would only make things worse

Nigel Farage announced Reform UK’s crime plans with familiar tough talk; more arrests, more prisons, more people behind bars. It’s a tired rerun of the same failed formula we’ve seen for decades. The promise to “halve crime” sounds good on a podium, but there’s no credible plan, no evidence and no understanding of what really drives offending or what actually works to reduce it. 

Farage and Reform’s approach will only exacerbate existing ills and put further pressure on an already near-collapse justice system. They claim it’s the number of prison places or people in prison that’s inadequate; we know that it’s the lack of support and resources available to enable a sustainable approach to reducing crime. 

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We agree with Reform on one thing: the system is broken. But it’s been broken by exactly the kind of kneejerk, headline-chasing policies they now double down on. 

The evidence is that, contrary to Farage’s claim, this has little to do with ‘foreign prisoners’. Rather, over the last 30 years, our prison population has spiralled upwards as a result of the same ‘tough on crime’ approach Reform champion. More people are sent to prison for longer periods of time, with little to no consideration of alternative options which are sustainable, affordable and better evidenced at stopping reoffending and helping people escape cycles of crisis and crime. 

The result is that the rate at which we are sending people to prison is fast outstripping the number of places available, with no signs of slowing. Reoffending is high and recalls to prison (more than three-quarters of which do not involve a further offence) are at record levels. Farage’s promise of ‘Nightingale prisons’ ring hollow: we are haemorrhaging prison officers, with staff leaving the service in droves. The same goes for probation staff – creating a vicious cycle where a broken-down system traps people in a revolving door of reoffending, simply shunting them from pillar to post without stopping to consider what support they might benefit from to stop offending.  

It’s rhetorically easy to whip up fear about law and order. But if Farage and Reform are serious about tackling crime, they need to consider its root causes.  

We work with people who have had experience of this ‘revolving door’ of reoffending. Their experiences are of years – lifetimes, even – of unmet health and social needs: substance use, poverty, homelessness, mental health struggles, trauma including domestic abuse, stigma because of race, or (often undiagnosed, yet overwhelmingly present) neurodiversity.  

J, our member who has been stuck in the revolving door told us, “I was just this little person – broken in two and I didn’t know how to put myself back together. And the only thing I knew how to do was offend, use, offend, use, offend, use, and nobody seemed to think, like, ‘Hang on, there is something wrong with this person. What can we do to help?’”   

For people like J, cycling in and out of prison on short sentences only made their situation worse. It separated them from support networks, cost them their housing and access to benefits, mental health and substance use treatments they were undergoing. Instead creating webs of uncertainty which only exacerbated the crisis they were experiencing 

It cost their family and loved ones, their communities and themselves. It also cost the public purse: we know that reoffending already costs the economy over £18 billion every year.  

Instead of costly, unsuccessful populist approaches which will only place greater pressure on our justice system and retraumatise people who are desperate for help, we need community solutions and a whole-system approach to ending the cycle of crisis and crime. 

We can’t arrest or imprison our way out of this.  

For those in the revolving door, community sentences, which can include requirements to engage in treatment for mental health and substance use issues, offer a lifeline to get sustainable support for the root causes of their offending within reach of other services and support networks.  

The evidence is clear: when the justice system and those working within it take a trauma-informed approach, offering support to address the root causes and focusing on long-term stability rather than short-term punishment, reoffending decreases. Costs – and lives – are saved, and communities are made safer and stronger. 

It’s easy to make empty promises, to threaten to be the ‘toughest party on law and order this country has ever seen’. Successive governments have tried and failed. But anyone serious about tackling crime, needs to go beyond hard talk and populism and consider the evidence which points to the urgent need for community solutions. 

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