Law and order - today's featured policy, Wednesday 21 April

Crime is one of the biggest issues facing the country. It is far too high and too many people don't feel safe - in their own homes and in their town centres. The Liberal Democrats want to cut crime to make you safer.

For too long the debate about policing and criminal justice policy has been centred around what sounds tough rather than what works to cut crime. Labour and the Tories have become embroiled in a sentencing arms race in a bid to pander to tabloid newspaper editors and to exploit a politics of fear. As well as putting 3,000 more police officers on the beat by scrapping ID cards, the Liberal Democrats are committed to meaningful reform of the police service and to putting criminal justice policy on an evidence-based footing. These proposals were outlined in our Cutting Crime by Catching Criminals paper in September.

Labour's catastrophic mismanagement of the criminal justice system has led to prisons bursting at the seams; the creation of over 3,600 new criminal offences since 1997; and an unprecedented criminalisation of our children. Instead of using prison and sentencing as a proxy for real action on crime, the Liberal Democrats will use alternative measures that are proven to reduce re-offending. These include community justice panels, the nationwide use of restorative justice and rigorous community punishments as an alternative to short-term prison sentences.

Related Links

• Read more about the Liberal Democrat policies on law and order