THE TURNING of the tide in the crime war, with the police in East Lancashire today revealing a sharp drop in break-ins thanks to a new anti-burglar tactic, is indeed a welcome development.

But almost as remarkable to us as the effectiveness of this strategy is the wonder of why it was not employed years ago.

For, put simply, all it amounts to is the police breathing down the necks of the known burglars and deterring them from committing more crimes rather than waiting for them to strike and then commencing the detection process.

Just how well this commonsense approach works is shown by the latest figures on burglary. In Darwen, they are down by 16 per cent and by 10 per cent in Blackburn.

And those statistics mean hundreds of homes have been spared from the menace and violation of these criminal predators. Untold amounts of heartache, financial loss and fear have been prevented in the process.

And this shift to the offensive by the police is not only gratifying because of its evident effectiveness, but also because it may mark a turning of the tables in the public's perception of crime - in that, now, it is the long overdue turn of the burglar to be afraid. That, we think, is an encouraging development - when, at the hands of a burglary explosion in the past two decades, society has become cowed and households forced to become barred and bolted fortresses.

However, as well as wondering why this aggressive police strategy has not been tried earlier, we are also concerned that its effectiveness may be undermined if a similar outlook is not displayed by the courts.

For it is all well and good for the police to hound and catch these vermin, but futile if they are not locked up when they are convicted - a point plainly made by the police themselves today.

And if, as we are told today, the focus of this anti-burglary drive are the repeat offenders and those who commit crimes while on bail, then the "soft" court syndrome - which has previously been claimed to be frustrating police efforts here in East Lancashire - must have no part in spoiling the encouraging strides we are now witnessing in the war on crime.

It will make no sense and be crazy justice if, at last, the police are rounding up the persistent burglars only for the courts to let them go again. They should be jailed, not bailed.

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