CAR crime is so widespread -- most car owners have either been victims or know others who have -- that it easily feeds the common public complaint that political tough-on-crime pledges are only so much hot air.

How encouraged, then, victims and people generally will be by the swift and positive efforts by police in East Lancashire to stamp out car crime in a determined drive that has slashed the rate of offences by nearly 40 per cent in a matter of weeks.

This follows a 30 per cent leap in auto-crime in the force's Blackburn-based Eastern Division during January. Since the beginning of February, the level of unlawful taking of vehicles and theft from them has

been turned around to a a decrease of more than seven per cent. In terms of numbers, it amounts to hundreds fewer offences -- and hundreds fewer victims.

But it is also the way in which this success has been gained that will hearten people For, in essence, this significant turnaround has been achieved by relentlessly breathing down the necks of the criminals and giving them no hiding place.

On top of several initiatives to catch offenders in the act, suspects have been earmarked and warned they are being watched. Spot checks on drivers and pedestrians have been carried out while the work of an undercover targeting team has led to 26 offenders being arrested.

And in another decisive step police are backing it up with a policy of publicly naming and shaming everyone convicted of car crime -- as they have done today with prolific teenage car thief Lee Suddick, of Blackburn, who is now locked up in a young offenders' institute.

It is just the sort of all-out zero-tolerance attitude that the car crime bane requires -- and its effects are evident. And supporting the name-and-shame stance, Home Secretary Jack Straw is right when he says justice needs to be out in the open.

With this sort of approach -- and, above all, meaningful punishment from the courts -- the tough-on-crime slogan will gain credibility that comes from real results.