LABOUR swayed voters with its pledge to be tough on crime and the causes of crime. Now, obviously alarmed by the recent rise in the crime figures and a surge in violent crime, it is expecting the police to take a leaf out of the target-setting and performance monitoring book it has issued to other public services.

For today it is setting individual forces with goals for the number of muggings to be slashed and reductions in other offences.

Even if the initiative may now be driven by ministerial political concern that the rising crime trend must be reversed before it becomes an issue to haunt the next election, there is nothing wrong with this drive of fixing firm targets on police forces and backing them up with a tough new inspection regime.

After all, if teachers and hospital workers can have the stimulus of league tables and waiting lists imposed on them to improve standards and efficiency, so, too, can the police.

And when crime audits reveal blackspots - such as the five areas where three-quarters of the country's muggings and robberies take place - and widely different success rates between forces, it is right that the least successful should be expected to be brought up to the performance of the better ones.

For people's experience of crime is still far too common and their fear of it, as local surveys have shown, makes it a prime issue for action among most voters.

But this new drive ought not to be read as a knee-jerk reaction by the government to the recent rise in crime figures. It comes after the country-wide crime audits that have properly examined not just the scale of the problem, but also its patterns.

A natural follow-up to those audits is the targeting announced today.

However, now that it is plainly looking for results - as is the electorate - the government cannot expect great improvements if it depends solely on performance-related pressures and methods improvement on already-stretched police forces.

As always, the fight against crime involves the partnership of the police and the community and the government will need to involve every agency - from local authorities and business to tenants' groups and Neighbourhood Watch bodies - in meeting these targets.

But, above all, the police will need extra resources and more bobbies on the beat, particularly when the increased numbers recently announced by the Home Secretary only largely make up for the fall in recruitment while Labour has been in office.

It will require the Chancellor to make these targets achievable, as much as any beefed-up performance-monitoring of the police.

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