S SUMNER (Letters, September 19) wishes for the return of hanging, National Service, caning and the birch.

This sounds very much like the usual ignorant, reactionary attitude towards any problem we encounter as a society -- beat it until it submits.

Perhaps if we looked at the root causes of crime -- poverty, deprivation, unemployment -- objectively, rather than subjectively and tried prevention rather than punishment, the issue would solve itself.

Capital and corporal punishment are barbaric and archaic and not the tools of an intelligent, civilised society.

They didn't work back then, and they certainly won't work now.

It is time people stopped whining on the sidelines for harsher punishments and actively campaigned in their communities to rectify the conditions which cause crime.

The police can only do so much -- and it will take more than men and women in uniform to reform our society: it will take co-operation and commitment -- and definitely a loss of barbaric dogmas pining for the 'good old days,' which weren't that good anyway.

JOHN F BARGH (age 16), Ormerod Terrace, Whiteacre Lane, Barrow, Clitheroe.