I SYMPATHISE and support the letter from "Disgusted".

I repeat that, in my view, there is only one adequate punishment that is suitable for a teenager who attacks, robs, threatens, frightens or injures an old person -- surely one of the most despicable crimes possible.

My punishment involves some sort of stick and a behind, whether or not it is male or female.

It should be ordered by the courts as an automatic sentence to put them through the same sort of experience that their victim has had in the final years of their life.

In Malaysia, it is an automatic sentence, I have been told.

It horrifies me that members of my sex are now increasingly becoming involved in crimes which, in my day, no girl had any part of.

Kate Embling

Thrapston Road

Oundle, Northants