Justice & Law Quote by Theresa May

A thousand process steps and seventy forms is less a statistic than a provocation: a deliberately jaw-dropping number meant to make bureaucracy feel not just inefficient, but morally absurd. Theresa May frames “a simple burglary” as the kind of everyday crime voters can picture immediately - broken window, stolen laptop, shaken household. Pairing that plain, domestic violation with an industrial scale of paperwork turns the justice system into the real offender: sprawling, self-justifying, and strangely indifferent to the victim’s basic need for closure.

The line “That can’t be right” is doing heavy work. It’s not an argument so much as an invitation to shared disbelief, a rhetorical shortcut that lets her bypass the messy trade-offs (due process, evidentiary rigor, accountability) and instead position reform as common sense. The subtext is managerial: the Criminal Justice System is presented like a failing service delivery operation, a machine clogged with forms that prevent frontline competence. It’s also political: if crime is a top-of-mind anxiety, then procedural overload becomes a handy culprit - not just for inefficiency, but for low detection rates and eroding public trust.

Context matters: May’s brand, especially as Home Secretary, leaned on competence, control, and “tough but effective” governance. This quote fits that posture. It signals sympathy for victims and frustration with institutional drag, while quietly justifying a push toward streamlining, targets, and central oversight. The risk - and the critique it anticipates - is that “simple” is rarely simple in criminal justice, and shaving steps can mean shaving safeguards. The power of the quote is that it makes that risk sound like an excuse.