Downward crime spiral

Like so many people I am appalled at the way juvenile delinquency appears to have grown out of all recognition.

It is driven by the sub-Marxist dogma that troublemakers are really the victims of our society. Our ruling elite seems to have abandoned any efforts to set moral limits or force wrongdoers to accept responsibility for their actions. This has led crime to spiral out of control. Instead of guiding the young, too many adults live in fear of them.

I agree whole-heartedly with the letter from Norman Freeman of Wombourne - quite rightly Letter of the Week - but I feel criminals have become bolder, and the descent into crime filled chaos will continue at a faster rate.

To punish criminals - even the younger ones - is not cruel. The real injustice lies in allowing the "bully boys" to flourish. The entire thrust of our judiciary is the appeasement of criminality.

The "do-gooders" keep telling me that crime is the result of deprivation. What utter nonsense! Poverty was far greater in the Thirties and after the war. I know, I was born in the Twenties and Great Britain was the most crime-free country in the world.

Our courts seem afraid to punish the wrongdoer, young or old. Politicians, the judiciary and civic leaders are fond of claiming that the solution to adolescent savagery lies in "giving the kids something to do", or increasing the education budget. But these are fallacies.

We have never spent more on education, yet we have never experienced such endemic violence, both in the classroom and in the streets. Our towns and cities are awash with sports clubs, Sure-Start schemes and after-school programmes, everyone of them keen to cater for the supposedly deprived teenager. But the cynics prefer to get "high" and kick a few heads in because they think it is more fun and they know that they will get away with it.

Roy C Girdler, Clarence Road, Bilston.