SIR - I have to agree that many sentences appear to be too short, but the problem isn't soft judges.

Judges have to work from an official "guide to sentencing" which sets minimum and maximum sentences depending on the crime and all the circumstances involved.

There's an outline of the system in "Fake Law", which comments that the system is so complex that even a Supreme Court judge has said he finds it difficult to understand.

And Philip Davies MP, a man not known for his softness on crime, said after spending a whole day listening to sentencing in the Bradford court that he hadn't known the complexity of the matter and conceded that all the sentences he heard were 'perfectly fair and reasonable'.

Christopher Evans, Victoria Avenue, Shipley