'ONLY 1 IN 100 REPORTED CRIMES END IN PROSECUTION'

Just one crime in every hundred now leads to the offender being
caught, charged and punished by the courts, latest statistics reveal.

The Home Office's own figures showed crime on the rise last year and
more criminals being caught by police, yet the numbers being sent
before the court dropped sharply by eight per cent
year-on-year.

Opposition critics blamed the dramatic rise in the use of "summary
justice" - instant fines or cautions and warnings handed out by the
police - and accused the Government of creating an "arbitrary" justice
system, letting off hundreds of thousands of criminals with
punishments no tougher than a parking ticket.

In the year to June 2006 the British Crime Survey measured 11,016,000
offences against adults living in households in England and Wales - up
from 10,912,000 in 2005.

However an analysis by independent statisticians - accepted by the
Home Office - shows that the British Crime Survey counts only a third
of all crimes as it ignores all offences against businesses including
shoplifting, "victimless" crimes such as drug possession and any
offences committed against under-16s.

The number of criminals caught and dealt with by police rose by six
per cent year-on-year from 1,428,000 to 1,516,000.

Yet the number of offenders charged and sent before the courts -
magistrates or crown courts -fell by eight per cent from 453,000 to
423,000.

More than 80,000 court cases were dropped or discontinued due to
suspects or witnesses failing to show up, and the number actually
sentenced in courts dropped five per cent from 317,000 to 306,000 -
less than one per cent of the estimated 33million-plus crimes each
year.

Most were given fines or community punishments and the number sent to
jail fell from 80,000 to 76,000 last year.

Meanwhile soaring numbers of crimes were diverted into the "instant"
justice system.

The use of police cautions or on-the-spot fines rose by more than
200,000 year-on-year.

Ministers are encouraging greater use of these rapid punishments even
for relatively serious crimes such as shoplifting, to avoid clogging
up the courts and to ease the prison overcrowding crisis.

The police also tend to favour instant punishments as they involve
less red-tape than a criminal prosecution but still count as "solved"
crimes, helping them meet Home Office targets.

But critics claim the policy represents an increasingly soft approach
which merely encourages repeat offending, while up to a third of fines
are never paid. The number of fixed penalty notices handed out by
police is rising fast with 146,481 in the year to March, more than
double the previous year's total of 63,639.

Ministers faced fierce criticism recently for extending the use of UKP80
spot fines - introduced four years ago - to cover shoplifting offences
up to a value of UKP200.

Since the law on cannabis was relaxed three years ago police have
stopped arresting most users and instead given them a warning - which
counts as a "detected" offence but carries no criminal record.

Last year 66,000 cannabis users received such warnings instead of
being charged, up from just 39,000 a year earlier.

Numbers of Penalty Notices for Disorder - spot fines for yobbish and
anti-social behaviour - have also rocketed to 110,000 in the year to
March, up from just 49,000 a year earlier.

And the use of cautions by police as an alternative to bringing
charges rocketed by 22 per cent 327,000 year-on-year.

Cautions can be handed out for burglary, assaults and possessing Class
A drugs. Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, said: "It is bad enough
that so many people are committing crimes, it is outrageous that so
many people are getting away with it.

"Labour have consistently undermined our criminal justice system by
effectively decriminalising many crimes.

"The solution is to simplify and reform our criminal justice system so
people can be properly and effectively punished, not to arbitrarily
divert offenders into a system where serious crimes are punished with
the equivalent of a parking ticket or warning note."

Crime levels have begun rising since John Reid took over as Home
Secretary in May - bringing to an end more than a decade of gradual
falls.

Muggings, low-level violence and drug possession are all on the rise
after the Government relaxed the laws on drinking and cannabis, and
scrapped a high-profile robbery crackdown.