Time to tackle the root cause

Crime is an election issue as never before. A recent poll for the Evening Standard showed it as the third most important concern for voters, behind only health and education.

That is despite the fact that overall crime rates have fallen since the mid-Nineties, while rates for burglary and vehicle crime are down by around 40 per cent since 1997. But violent crime has risen in London in recent years - a trend confirmed by today's figures. Gun and knife crime is up, and while anti-social behaviour is hard to measure, most people would agree there is more of it. Public fear of crime remains high.

Surprisingly, there is a fair degree of consensus between the parties on the solutions. Ever since Tony Blair famously declared that Labour would be "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime", Labour have migrated towards what were once hard-line Tory positions on law and order. So Labour has pledged to keep police numbers "historically high" and to employ almost 20,000 extra Community Support Officers to work with them in neighbourhood teams. It also promises a range of other measures including tighter laws on the possession of guns and knives and increased tagging of prisoners.

The Tories, meanwhile, promise 5,000 more police officers every year - 40,000 more by 2008. They also focus on the prison system, promising to end the early release scheme. There are certainly shortcomings to the scheme, but the main rationale for it was prison overcrowding. The Conservatives will need a solution to that, for they also call for prisoners to "serve the full sentence handed down by the court" instead of being eligible for release half way through their sentences.

Finally the Liberal Democrats promise more police and Community Support Officers, more Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (Asbos), and greater use of community service for nonviolent offenders.

Would any of these packages make much difference? Most research agrees that the biggest factor in deterring criminals is the risk of getting caught and convicted. More police are part of that solution, but just as important is a court system and prosecutors who can get convictions. Yet the Crown Prosecution Service remains woefully inefficient and slow; the courts are not much better. Fewer than one in five reported crimes see the perpetrator brought to justice.

It is hard to see how that can be improved without a serious shakeup of the police. It is dominated by restrictive working practices and the resistance to change of the main police union, the Police Federation. No government has yet had the courage to face it down.

Meanwhile the criminal courts remain, in many respects, a 19th century relic. There is an urgent need for reform of the arcane rules of evidence and court procedures that allow defence lawyers to play long, drawn-out games with juries.

Finally. the prisons need to do a far better job of making sure that prisoners do not simply end up back behind bars - as more than half do at present within two years of release.

The parties' consensus on more police and a tougher approach to anti-social behaviour will help. But none of them seem willing to tackle the real reasons the system lets criminals get away with it.