The Adam Smith Institute’s latest policy briefing, written by Maxwell Marlow and Sofia Risino, suggests various childcare reforms aimed at cutting costs, boosting quality and increasing parental choice.
Our courts our slow, outdated, and costly. Adam Thierer shows how people in the US have abandoned them for private arbitration: and how the state and federal courts have had to accommodate this change. A model for modernising the court service in the United Kingdom and elsewhere?
Read it here.
At the centre of the problem for the Police Service is the fact that while the crime rate appears to rise inexorably, local authorities and central government have to operate within an economic framework of financial restraint. Resource allocation to the police therefore not only implies difficult decisions, but is further complicated because the business of evaluating the success of the police is an imprecise and highly subjective matter.
The Police Service with its monopolistic, un–competitive structure, operates all too easily in an environment where there is little or no yardstick for comparison against alternatives. This report looks at the different ways that crime is combatted. It also argues that a return to local policing is the way forward to fight the rising levels of crime with the major restructuring of the police service giving rise to greater service evaluation, improved efficiency and a more flexible response to the increasing market demand for choice.
This colloquium discusses the causes, nature and framework for crime prevention in the UK. Although no consensus was attempted, the majority of participants believe that alternative ways of curbing crime other than simply sentencing policy should be pursued.
In 1986 the Adam Smith Institute called for the reform and liberalisation of the archaic drinking and licensing laws of England and Wales. This study by the ASI compared Scotland and England and Wales after the laws had been changed North of the border. It found that even though alcohol was more readily available there, there was a reduction in the negative aspects of drink such as disorderly behaviour and health problems.
Read it here.
