AGAINST a background of complaints from penal reformers that minimum sentences are "crude and unjust," Home Secretary Jack Straw today implemented the controversial three-strikes-and-you're-out policy that means burglars convicted of breaking into private homes three times will go to jail for at least three years.

He need not heed these critics, but should hearken instead to the applause of ordinary people who have become sick and scared of the crime plague that has made burglary the bane of Britain.

And though it may be fuelled by drug addicts stealing in order to feed their habit, the very frequency and commonness of burglary - occurring in Lancashire at the rate of more than 24,000 reported cases a year, half of which involve people's homes - stresses that the leniency of the law and courts were also factor in its upsurge.

People recall the age when they could safely leaves their homes unlocked because burglary was treated and dealt with as a serious crime and, as a result, was nothing like the menace it has become today. In rightly reverting to that stance, the government - which must give credit to its Conservative predecessors for this policy of minimum sentences for career criminals - is restoring the deterrence that was evidently lacking when, until now, a fifth of burglars convicted for as third time could expect to escape jail.

And the argument that it is more effective to spend money on crime prevention than on putting offenders in prison, as voiced today by Mr Straw's critics, will cut no ice with the majority who want the law to prevent crime from happening to them rather than for them to have to turn their homes into fortresses because the law is inadequate.

This policy may be strict, but it is fair and sensible.

It will show mercy twice over to offenders and, thus, contains ample scope for considering and addressing any personal problems that cause them to commit crime, but, at the third stroke says: "Enough!"

And having had enough of burglary already, the country can now at last confidently hope for less.

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