THE reason why we have such trouble with prostitution is that the Government is too ready to listen to the do-gooders - so argued V Mitchell in The Bolton News of March 24.

I didn't even know that there was a do-gooders' "party line" on prostitution, much less that the Government had listened to it. On its past track record, I somehow doubt if it did.

It is far more likely that some accountant or economist in the Home Office worked out that it costs somewhere between £35,000 and £40,000 to keep a prostitute in prison for a year. Never mind the capacity. But we can always build some more.

It will cost money, but what difference does that make?

Add on to that the policing costs of arresting, charging, and convicting the prostitute - which is likely to amount to, on average £114.88 per occasion in police wages alone, plus as much again in on-costs, say £230.64, and a similar amount for court and processing costs, total £461.28 and you have costs per client of around £40,500 per year.

If the woman in question also has a dependent child or children (and some of them do), the local council will have the additional costs of taking the child or children into care for the duration.

Now if you can get a woman off the streets, off drugs, into rehab and into a stable lifestyle for anything much less than the £40,000-plus that it costs to put her in prison, then the argument is not about do-gooding but about cost effectiveness and value for money.

And you've saved the cost and disruption of putting the children into care.

Peter Johnston, Kendal Road, Bolton