SURPRISE, surprise, crime figures are soaring. After three years in office Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, admitted: "I am in no doubt there has been an increase in violent crime." Overall, crime has increased by almost four per cent, and this four per cent translates into 190,000 more victims than the year before.

These statistics laugh in the face of the Prime Minister who grandly announced, on coming to office, that he would be 'tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime'. And it really depends where you live as to whether you are likely to suffer at the hands of criminals. For example, if you live in Bradford you are more than twice as likely to have something stolen from your car as you are to be violently assaulted (nine per 1000 people).

However, you are almost four times more likely to be burgled. In other parts of England and Wales the figures vary widely. Do statistics leave you as cold as they do me?

From my perspective they are meaningless. Throughout the 43 police areas of England and Wales I suspect that senior police officers are searching these figures for some crumb of comfort that says they are doing a good job. On the one hand, the Chief Constable of the South Wales police force will no doubt be patting himself and his officers on the back for a statistical reduction. On the other hand his Midlands counterpart will be donning sack-cloth and ashes and bewailing the effectiveness of his officers.

What do our politicians say they'll do about the situation? The Conservatives recommend that thousands more criminals be sent to gaol. The Labour Party resort to pouring vast sums of money into this inner-city initiative or that social programme. None of these so-called solutions will do anything to reverse this unsatisfactory trend. As long as this country has a social and economic underclass it will always produce villains.

If we're not very careful we will go down the same road as the Americans. In the United States they have a prison population approaching two million. Granted, the population of the United State is 260 million, but to have such a large number of people behind bars has to be a social volcano on the verge of eruption. What happens when these disaffected citizens are released back into the community? A goodly proportion see society as belonging to others and re-offend.

Don't get me wrong, if a crime has been committed the perpetrator should be called to account. But this upside-down society has turned the Christian maxim of hate the sin and not the sinner on its head. There is another old maxim about people in glass houses throwing stones and yet another that says: "There but for the grace of God go I".

Filling the prisons to bursting point is not the answer, neither is throwing money at the problem. The answer lies deeper, much deeper: in society itself.