THE ONLY WAY TO STOP CRIME IS TO EDUCATE CRIMINALS. AND THE PUBLIC

Crime in Britain is at last falling, according to figures published
tomorrow in the two-yearly British Crime Survey - far more reliable
than police recorded crime figures, also out this week. Car thefts are
down, as is burglary and violence. Although it comes as no surprise -
property crime always falls in economic booms as more people find
employment - the fall is better than expected.

Good news, except when you look across the Atlantic and wonder why our
property crime now far outstrips America. Britain has a burglary rate
of 80 per 1,000 people, while the US has 50 per 1,000. We also have
twice as many car thefts.

The US Bureau of Justice has just compared British and American crime
rates, a report the Home Office hoped no one here would notice, but it
fell into the gleeful hands of right-wing newspapers yesterday. What
did they conclude? Why, of course, that prison works. America now
imprisons 1.7 million people, a huge increase from 400,000 in 1980.
Excited by the American figures, Michael Howard's "prison works"
policy drove up the prison population here from 42,000 in 1993 to a
peak of 67,000 this July. More people in jail equals lower crime,
easy. (Violence is another story: the US has three times more recorded
rapes, a third more robberies and six times more homicides. We have
three times more assaults - but if we had as many hand guns, many
would end in homicide.)

But let's stick with property crime, for which most people are in
jail. How has America done so well? Is it prison? The US Bureau of
Justice does not think so, and this is the fact that has been so
misreported. Analysing the greatly varying patterns across the US,
there is no correlation between high imprisonment and big crime falls.
Also "zero tolerance" has made little perceptible difference - Houston
with no such policy has seen as great a crime drop as New York where
the Mayor boasts of its importance. No, the key common cause of
success is catching and convicting felons. States with the best
clear-up rates have the lowest crime; the number they send to prison
makes no difference.

In Britain, conviction rates have fallen fast since 1981, while in
America they have improved sharply. Thirty per cent of prosecutions
here are now dropped (early cautions have a high success rate for
stopping reoffending). Criminals assess their risk of being convicted,
not the length or type of sentence they'll get. The failure of the
British police and Crown Prosecution Service is much to blame for our
high crime rates.

Nonetheless, our property crime is falling. Car crime has been cut
mainly because of better security systems and burglaries are down
because people are locking up their houses. Most property crime is
opportunistic, spur of the moment stuff. Locks and alarms work because
burglars are unadventurous, travelling no more than two miles from
their home.

What explains the phenomenal fall in US crime? It is partly
demographics, with fewer young men around. But there is a growing
belief that Lyndon Johnson's Head Start programme is a key answer. For
30 years now, 700,000 children a year from the highest crime areas
have been given two years of nursery education, drawing in their
mothers for parenting help. It's modelled on a pioneering Michigan
scheme which showed that the children involved - now in their thirties
- - have, when compared with a control group, thrived, with far lower
crime rates, higher college qualfications, better jobs, more wealth
and home ownership.

This programme inspired Jack Straw to propel the Home Office into the
unlikely role of nursery and parent educators. Next year UKP200
million worth of intensive nursery schemes will be in place in high
crime areas to supplement the Sure Start programme. The schemes are
designed to teach chaotically reared young children how to think ahead
and organise their lives. They expect results by the time the children
reach 10 in improved school behaviour and achievement, with fewer
early signs of criminality. The evaluations will continue into
adulthood to prove to future governments that the schemes work,
encouraging increasing investment over the years.

Since prison doesn't work, it's hoped the prison population peaked in
July and will continue on downwards. Judges seem to have got the new
message and from next year governors can release prisoners early on
electronic tags. Since a third of property crime is drug
addiction-driven, the new Drug Treatment Orders instead of prison may
help. With fewer in jail, desperate governors can start offering good
education courses in prison: making convicts literate can reduce
reoffending by 20 per cent.

But how do you persuade the people that prison doesn't work? Straw
hasn't started to tell the public the facts about prison - 80 per cent
think the courts are too soft in sentencing, although most haven't the
faintest idea what the actual tariff is. Recently when researchers
gave focus groups the facts of particular cases in mock trials, people
overwhelmingly meted out lower sentences than the judges. Taking a
23-year-old burglar with two previous convictions, half the group gave
a community sentence, the other half gave one year in jail. In that
actual case, the judge had given three years.

Court reporting in the press is so grotesque that when researchers
gave one focus group the newspaper reports of a case, they all said
the sentence was too low, but when another group was given the court
papers of the case to read, they said the judge's sentence was too
high. Ignorance, inflamed by the right-wing press creates the clamour
for harsher sentencing. There is a pressing need for public education
on sentencing policy, but politicians never dare do it. Straw's
policies all pull in the right direction, but it can't just be done by
stealth. As prison numbers fall, in the face of clamours for more
prison, sooner or later he will have to start explaining why his
policies are right.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry