THE right hand does not know, or care, what the left is doing.

On one hand, Employment Minister Tessa Jowell launches a plan to reintegrate criminal offenders into society by their employment, saying, "Ex-offenders leaving prison without a job are twice as likely to re-offend. Encouraging ex-offenders into jobs is one of the best ways to reduce offending."

On the other, Home Secretary Jack Straw launches a plan to make all jobseekers carry criminal conviction certifications.

The very purpose of these certificates is discrimination and, as many employers operate blanket exclusion, they will close the labour market to ex-criminals, condemning them and their children to a life of crime, trapped within serial reoffending.

No longer will it be possible for young criminals to find work, outgrow crime and then make restitution to society through work-supported parenthood.

Certification will ensure lifelong criminal careers, with offenders' taxpayer-supported, deprived, embittered children recommencing the criminal cycle.

Exclusion will apply to the 'heavy' categories of violent and sexual offenders who will be unemployable under certification. We want violent offenders at work, not wandering the streets embittered, drinking cheap alcohol and forming gangs..

Exclusion will also apply to the 'lighter' categories of perpetrators of relatively victimless crimes. For example, prostitution convictions will now trap women within prostitution often in the clutches of vicious pimps. If a woman must carry a degrading stigmatising 'prostitute certificate' then, forget it, she'll go back on the streets.

It is nauseating hypocrisy to pretend to oppose social exclusion but to create more by certificate -- a new, vicious mode of exclusion -- along with much higher crime.

V TOWNLEY, High Road, London N22.