4.3 Flashcards
Campaigns affecting policy making
Newspaper campaigns
Newspaper Campaigns:
• Sarah’s Law:
- Prompted by the murder of 8 year old Sarah Payne in 2000. Whiting has previous convictions for child sex offences.
Newspapers backed Sarah’s parents, campaigned to introduce a law giving people the right to know if a person was a convicted sex offender.
700,000 signatures received on a petition.
Campaign persuaded the government to introduce the child sex offender disclosure scheme 2011.
- There was an initial concern about the paedophiles hiding, however this was not an issue in the trial scheme so it became a national policy.
2. Individual Campaigns:
• Clare’s Law:
- George Appleton, had a history of sexual assault convictions, has murdered his ex-girlfriend.
- Clare had made several complains to the police about Appleton harassing and threatening to kill her, but the police had taken no action.
- Clare’s farther had campaigned to introduce a law to enable women to know about their partners violent past. He was supported by radio key 103, charities and politicians.
- Campaign persuaded the government to introduce the domestic violence disclosure scheme 2014.
- Gives the person the right to disclose information about their partner or the partner of someone else, and allows the police to disclose information to protect a potential victim even without request.
3. Pressure Group Campaigns:
• British lung foundation:
- Aims to prevent lung disease by campaigning for positive change in the UK’s lung health.
- Recent campaign was to change the law on smoking in cars with children. Secured 50,000 signatures with a petition Also ran research reports and are published on their website Have 25,000 followers on social media which is small, but they ar followed by influential people such as Jeremy Corbyn.
- As a result of this campaign, there is a ban on smoking in cars with children.
