It looks like proposed Violent Offender Orders will cause yet another split between government and the judges.

The Guardian reports:

Senior judges have warned ministers they risk a re-run of their clash with the courts over control orders by introducing new proposals that will place “massive restrictions” on certain convicted violent offenders after they have left prison.

The problems are not only those of proportionality and practicality raised by the judges. If those who breach orders face a five-year prison sentence, there’s bound to be a knock-on effect on prison numbers, already at record highs. Probation officers are already massively overworked, and it isn’t clear how they will find the time and resources to enforce VOOs as welll.

Perhaps the government should revisit Ming Campbell’s proposals for a more proportionate and manageable Violent Offenders Register, first suggested in May 2006. It has the clear advantage that it might actually help instead of hinder the criminal justice system…

See today’s Independent for news of Nick Clegg’s plans to take on Gordon Brown on the growing surveillance society.

Of course, Dave’s Conservatives have abandoned the defence of civil liberties and personal privacy and decided to abolish the Data Protection Act (or rewrite, or reform, or, oh we’re not sure).

Fortunately the Liberal Democrats aren’t so fickle, so there’ll be a motion debated at this year’s conference on curtailing the excesses of this growing surveillance society.

Is the Home Office really only capable of doing one thing at a time?

Asylum seeker deportations have dropped again this quarter, the Telegraph reports. And the government’s explanation according to the Press Association?

A Home Office spokesman said the fall in the asylum removals was because officials were concentrating on deporting foreign criminals rather than would-be refugees.

Clearly multi-tasking is just a step too far.

Britain is in a state of anarchy, David Cameron informed us this morning. Bear in mind this is a man who’s visited Iraq and Afghanistan, so he should know a thing or two about anarchy.

His comments stem in part from reports of a characteristically astute analysis from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies on knife crime. It concludes:

Since it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to limit the availability of knives, and knives are merely a tool used in violent crime, success in fighting knife usage will only come with success in dealing with underlying causes of violence, fear and insecurity.

I wonder what effect Mr Cameron thinks his “anarchy” comments will have on the levels of fear and insecurity that drive people to carry knives? Just a thought.

Bad news in today’s Telegraph: the prisons crisis is upon us again, despite a major early-release programme introduced in July.

Ministers are facing a new prison population crisis despite ordering the early release of thousands of inmates. Campaigners say they expect the population to climb back to a new record high within days.

Sorry to sound like a stuck record, but when will they accept it’s time for a whole new approach to prison, with a focus on rehabilitation instead of mass incarceration?

Or do they actually like spending more on crime and punishment than anyone in the OECD? (see Figure 3 on page 20)

Thames Valley police has incurred the wrath of the Daily Mail, and plenty of others, for recruiting 16-year olds to be Police Community Support Officers.

And just down the M4 in London, traffic fines are costing the Met police £900 a day, the Guardian reports. Last year’s bill was well over £300,000 - up a third on last year.

UPDATE: Just noticed this one too - Penalty Notices for Disorder (also known as “pay and go” justice) are being issued at a rate of three a minute, all in the name of OBTJ targets. That’s Offences Brought to Justice, for those who didn’t know.

We all know that the Labour Government doesn’t have the best track record of delivering IT projects on budget and on time (and we’re not even going to mention ID cards). So it’s with a heavy heart that I bring you news of another Whitehall computer-related farce, this time from the shiny new Ministry of Justice.

The National Offender Management System was supposed to keep tabs on the country’s 300,000 prisoners and probationers. The budget for the system of £234 million has, according to The Guardian, “proved to be optimistic” - with the current estimate for the project reaching four times that, well on its way to £1 billion. Consequently, the Government has now frozen the whole project and cancelled the rollout to thirty more prisons that was supposed to happen by the end of the year.

The Ministry of Justice last night confirmed that a “rapid review” of the custody-Noms information system, officially known as C-Nomis, is under way. Ministers are to decide in mid-September how much of the project can be salvaged. It is expected that it will be adopted in a scaled-down form for the 140 prisons in England and Wales but is unlikely to be rolled out across the probation service. Cancellation could involve paying the contractors, EDS, a £50m penalty.

The Government has spent £155m so far on the project. Value for money, as ever.

Read the full story here.

Brown may do something about the Iraqi interpreters seeking UK refugee status.

But not enough, as  Chicken Yoghurt explains.

As Nick Clegg said last month, there’s got to be a fairer way to treat aylum seekers, hasn’t there? It seems worth repeating his call:

We need a fair, effective and compassionate approach to asylum. Every case should be decided on its individual merits. We should find ways to accommodate some of the refugees we have helped to displace in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we should be flexible about halting temporarily deportations to countries that are manifestly dangerous, instead of exploiting every last legal loophole to remove people.

The Prime Minister has pledged to use his moral compass in leading our country. If that compass is working, it must surely direct him to a wholesale review of our asylum policies.

The Daily Mail finally cottons on to the government’s plans to take DNA from people for non-recordable offences, like littering, speeding and driving the wrong way up a one-way street.

Here at Home Office Watch, we spotted this months ago (OK, so we forgot to mention DNA, focusing instead on the fingerprinting powers, but no-one’s perfect).

Fact is, whenever you noticed it, these are dramatic proposals. A DNA sample is already added to the database every minute; add in the minor motoring offenders, litter louts and fare evaders and we could have half the population on there.