The home of common sense. This is talk.

Let's talk to Peter Hitchin. He's here with this conference to the mail on Sunday. Very good morning, Peter.

Good morning. Much to talk about this morning. It will come as no surprise to you as it did not to mean that career criminals on the front page of Daily Telegraph are rooming the land free. They don't get locked up really anymore

because there isn't any room to put them anywhere. Well, of course not. And this is actually

not really news. It's been the case for decades. People are beginning ever so slowly to

cotton on to things that I've been saying now for a quarter of a century,

one of which is these.

It's much, much harder to get into prison than it is to get into university.

And that is almost a defining feature of this country.

And once you've accepted that, then in awful other things will fall into place.

The authorities don't want to put people in prison.

The police don't want to pursue criminals that they can possibly avoid it.

There is no serious criminal justice system in this country.

And the fascinating thing is the contrast between the effective and successful application of severe criminal justice against the disorderly people in the past few days and the totally unsuccessful failure to do so.

In general, you're not, the government will protect itself. I think this is a brilliant piece of political action by the Starma government

which has strengthened its position considerably by its display of police and prison force, as it were, over the past few days. But they will

not protect you in your own street. They won't protect you from what is loosely called

anti-social behavior, the louts hanging around, smashed windows to vandalism, the uncontrolled

drinking, the drug taking, and all the rest of it, but they will protect themselves because they know it works.

Just as criminals know it works, the way criminals discipline each other, there's a great deal of use of force and violence and threat, which would never, ever be countenance by the state in dealing with criminals.

It's fascinating that these simple principles abandoned by the liberal states since the 1960s

are understood by everybody when it comes to themselves.

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