THEY say the twin pitfalls of age are garrulity and melancholy.

But it is easy to imagine waking with a backache and a stomach making noises like a Ford Prefect trying to start on a cold, damp morning, to imagine that we are sleepwalking our way into some dark vision of the near future.

It is true most people are deeply uneasy about the inability of the law to deal with criminals, especially juvenile offenders.

Absurd and excessive liberalism has allowed a nation's police force to be run ragged by a generation of over-indulged adolescents.

It is hardly surprising, considering the wearily repetitious and absurdly lenient slap on the wrist dispensed by the courts, that the police have all but given up in some areas, simply going through the motions of pursuing juvenile offenders, concentrating their resources to combat more serious felony.

One columnist advocated the right to bear arms against the criminal, quoting the low levels of burglary in certain states in America where there is a high level of gun ownership.

This depressingly blinkered view gives substance to the dyspeptic nightmare of our nation descending into lawlessness.

But what is unacceptable is the disproportionate leniency of the courts towards those who are maliciously culpable of death, especially of those guilty of the abomination of causing death to children through mistreatment and abuse, and the hypocritical, draconian sentences passed on those who had the temerity to relieve the state or individual of their disparate wealth of possessions.

The law brings disrepute upon itself, and demeans the office of the enforcer. With an unprecedented tide of drugs and handguns flooding into the country, and current expectation of a huge influx of heroin, the police need support.

JOHN P HUNTER

Kerry Close, Shaw, Swindon