A OVER the last 30 years or so, I have had full exposure to most of the fruit-cake right-wing arguments going on around crime and punishment.

There isn't, therefore, much in Geoff Pollitt's letter (Bolton Evening News, Apr 22) that I haven't previously heard. What was it the Jesuits were supposed to say? "Give me a child for the first seven years of its life, and I will show you the man."

That in itself proves that the schools system cannot (even if it were the right instrument) make up for deficiencies in parenting. Mr Pollitt, like many of his fellow sympathisers, has constructed a mythological golden age and demands our assistance in reinstating it. But it didn't work last time either!

Years ago when researching in Manchester University Library, I came across a little book entitled simply "Police Work" by one Jerome Caminada.

Caminada was appointed Chief Constable of the City of Manchester in 1895 and his brief was quite simply to tackle and eliminate the vast morass of street and community crime of all descriptions which was rife in the city.

Now the schools system had been established since 1870, and we may take it that conditions in Victorian schools were every bit as harsh as Mr Pollitt would wish, but they clearly did not prevent massive urban crime. Over about 15 years, and by a combination of skilled use of resources, a certain amount of cunning, and what would now be described as intelligence-based policing, Caminada won the acclaim of a grateful city, and cleaned the place up. His book was an account of the conditions he encountered and how he dealt with them.

If, as we are informed, the bulk of the crime wave is the work of a relatively small number of offenders, perhaps we should be taking a few hints from Jerome Caminada. We certainly would not achieve anything by reintroducing corporal punishment in schools. They had it in the little three form entry provincial grammar school I entered as a boy. And, yes, I was caned. It didn't alter my behaviour any, only made me more careful about getting caught. It didn't work then, and it won't work now.

Peter Johnston

Kendal Road

Bolton