It is not surprising that, from time to time, members of the public express their lack of faith in the police.

It is reported that Chief Superintendent Robin Smith, East Sussex Divisional Commander, has created his own account on Twitter (The Argus, August 24) in order to build on communication networks between police and the public. This is not adequate.

Britain suffers from more than 27,000 crimes a day or more than ten million crimes a year – the direct result of decades of softly-softly, politically correct policing and a failed social engineering policy which has put the rights of yobs and criminals above that of victims.

According to the Office for National Statistics’s British Crime Survey of 2008, 22% of people in Britain will be the victim of some crime during the course of a single year.

To combat this state of affairs we need a return to traditional standards of law enforcement, combined with social reform directed at addressing the root causes of criminal behaviour. To this end, the Government should: 1. Put police back on the streets and free the police and courts from the politically correct straitjacket that is stopping them from doing their jobs properly 2. End the liberal fixation with the “rights” of criminals and replace it with concern for the rights of victims and the right of innocent people not to become victims 3. Re-introduce corporal punishment for petty criminals At the same time, there is evidence that it is decades of social welfare dependence – encouraged by disastrous Labour and Tory policies – which is the primary cause of social delinquency and must be brought to an end.

Social reform is therefore also required. Workfare, not welfare should be the norm, except to the most needy. Only in this way can the cycle of social deprivation, which is the primary cause of indigenous criminality, be broken.

To this end, Government should introduce a system of workfare for those in unemployment benefit for more than six months with compulsory work and training in return for decent wages.

Keith Standring
Amherst Road, Bexhill