This time it is the evil, HIV-infected Lennie Smith, who, suspected of being responsible for the murder of up to five children, was jailed for 10 years in 1992 for a string of sex attacks on a six-year-old boy and is now being let loose.

Why? We are told the prison authorities will be forced to release him in less than 10 weeks' time because "under the parole system he will have served two-thirds of his sentence."

It is, of course, outrageous that the system cares so well for the rights of a sex monster and so damned little for those of society and its children.

But as he casts about for ways of stopping paedophiles being released if they are still considered a danger, would not Home Secretary Jack Straw do well to put an end, too, to prison sentences being nothing more than fairy stories when it comes to offenders actually serving the stretch they have been given?

If all criminals had to do the time in jail they are supposed to do on paper, there might be fewer of them - and crazy instances of child-molesting peverts being let out long before they should be, if they ever should be at all, might also be fewer,

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.