Courts fight shy of 'three strikes'

The courts have yet to use their powers to imprison a persistent burglar under the home secretary's controversial "three strikes and you're out" mandatory sentence.

Home Office figures demonstrate that the courts have failed to embrace a range of law and order initiatives introduced over the past 18 months. The police and local authorities have also not yet used a child curfew order since the changes.

Recent parliamentary questions confirm that the courts, like the police, have failed to use their powers to impose mandatory three-year sentences on persistent burglars, or to issue a child safety order, a measure that is similar to a curfew but involves a single named child.

Only four convicted drug dealers have received a statutory mandatory seven-year sentence for a second trafficking offence since the rule was introduced in October 1997.

Mr Straw's anti-social behaviour orders, designed to tackle the problem of "neighbours from hell", have been a little more successful, with 140 orders made by the courts from the time the orders were introduced in April last year until the end of October. The much trumpeted "parenting orders" are also beginning to take off and the courts have made more than 400 such orders during the past six months.

Some government measures aimed at tackling juvenile crime have been more successful, too. Reparation orders - under which the child offender has to make some kind of restitution to the victim - have been used 2,148 times, and action plan orders - which set out a programme of community service and conditions - used 2,408 times.

The most popular measures with the courts were orders that were improved versions of long-standing sentences used by magistrates. There have been more than 18,000 supervision orders, and more than 2,000 detention and training orders under which juveniles are sent to secure units and young offenders' institutions.

But most party political interest is likely to focus on the failure of the courts to embrace the "three strikes and you're out" law with regard to burglars. This measure was put on the statute book by the last Conservative home secretary, Michael Howard. The present home secretary, Mr Straw, said it would only be implemented when there was sufficient prison space to house extra inmates.

The National Association of Probation Officers has calculated that thousands of burglars could be imprisoned when the courts start to use the "three strikes" policy. Napo estimates that by 2004 about 8,000 offenders will have been convicted of three house break-ins and so will face the automatic three-year jail term.

It is believed that the courts' failure to use the new mandatory sentence stems largely from the limited discretion they have in avoiding imposing it in cases where it would be "unjust in all the circumstances". It may also be due to delays in the courts which have meant that few burglars have been convicted three times in the past year since the authorities began using the new power.

Harry Fletcher, of Napo, said: "We are pleased that the courts are exercising their discretion, otherwise Britain's jails would not be able to cope.

"The previous records of those on probation suggest that if the provision for three strikes were implemented in every case, the jail population would rise by nearly 5,000 over a full year. At the moment the prison population stands at 64,075."