ALAN Royle writes: "It seems that every time you pick the newspaper up these days, you read of an attack on somebody" (Letters , April 10).

Well, that is not what the official crime statistics show, but we all know that official statistics are massaged and all the "taproom sociologists" know better, don't we?

The demon kings in this particular pantomime are, of course, political correctness and those "liberal minded do-goooders" who have subverted and eroded our penal system.

Now, I know that prison cells these days have proper sanitation, we no longer send prisoners out on work detail chained together or to break rocks on Dartmoor, but we still imprison a higher proportion of our adult male population than any other West European country, and keep them there for longer - including a worryingly large number of people who are functionally illiterate, or are displaying visible signs of mental illness.

Off hand, the only occasion I can think of when the police were denied powers they required was the recent parliamentary row over their wish for 90-day detention of terror suspects.

I cannot see any other issue on which "liberal minded do-gooders" have produced any alteration in the powers and duties of our police.

As to "fighting fire with fire" - what had the correspondent got in mind? Having the police carry knives or encourage police brutality as practised on the terraces at Roma? I think not!

Peter Johnston, Kendal Road, Bolton