DEAR EDITOR - My thanks to Mr. Pugh on his response to my recent thoughts on the best way to decrease the incidence of crime.

While I certainly did argue that a harsher penal system is not the solution, I did not suggest, as he seemed to think, that the current system was working.

Overcrowded prisons and rising re-offending rates do not prove prison is too soft, just that the current system is failing. The disagreement between Mr. Pugh and I is purely over how best to fix a broken system.

Unlike Mr Pugh I think that crueller prisons would serve only to alienate offenders from society, rather than reconcile them with a normal and productive role.

The most dreadful revenge will not deter the murderers of innocent children, who operate beyond the limits of sanity, humanity and reason.

Mr Pugh champions unspecified foreign countries' systems. Does he mean the torture and public executions of the Taleban?

I have no problem with imprisoning those criminals who pose a threat to society but ask that their time in jail is used to help them rather than brutalise them.

At the end of the day, I share Mr Pugh's despair over crime and the failure of the current system, but continue to differ with him over the most effective method.

Richard Huzzey,

Hanbury Road,

Stoke Heath.