Criminal Justice

Whilst transformational change is difficult when we don’t hold all the necessary levers in Wales, meaningful interventions can still be made. A Plaid Cymru Government will:

• Tackle the root causes of drug misuse through innovative programmes such as Checkpoint Cymru.
• Establish drug consumption rooms for people to stablise their drug use.
• Make the reporting process of sexual violence and abuse as straightforward as possible, ensuring that all incidents are investigated and that all survivors are offered the support of an Independent Sexual Violence Advisor.
• Ensure that all victims and survivors have access to well-funded counselling services.
• Aim to understand and tackle knife crime by working with youth clubs, youth workers, schools and similar groups to improve youth services and ensure a youth club is located in every town.
• Work with communities most affected by hate crime to build the communities’ confidence in the system.
• Widen the range of community penalties available to the courts as an alternative to custody.

To complement these policies, a Plaid Cymru Government will create an arms-length Criminal Justice Research Institute in order to embed academic expertise on justice and community safety in the Welsh policymaking process.

As part of a wider programme to eradicate systemic racism, including in the criminal justice system, we would:

• Review disproportionate criminal justice outcomes and the effectiveness of the justice process in dealing with racism. These reviews will draw from the Lammy and Angiolini Reports.
• Explore options around a potential stand alone offence of misogynistic harassment and make misogyny a hate crime.
• Set targets to diversify the police and magistrate benches and collaborate with bodies such as the Magistrates Association to widen the pool of candidates.