THE Government's soft-on-crime approach is the Major Irritant of the Week.

Isn't it funny how crime figures are supposedly down and yet community fear levels have gone through the roof?

I'm sure the Government will drag out the usual trite and worn excuses. It's the media's fault. We're scaring people. We only print the negative articles. We're exaggerating.

Sometimes you have to wonder if the people in power actually live on this island with the rest of us. Do they have some special colony on Mars that they retreat to when they're not in the office? Don't they have children out there on the roads? Don't they have mothers or sisters who would like to take a walk without worrying about being attacked? Do they have old grandparents who live alone? Do they think their MP status gives them immunity from criminals?

My own fear and stress levels have gone up since being at home and it has nothing to do with media reports. Within the last two weeks, two people I know have been attacked in separate incidents.

On Saturday evening my 16-year-old cousin was driving home in the late evening. He and his friends had been hanging out at the Ice Queen. While there they witnessed an incident involving another group. The other group was asked to leave the premises. The event did not include my cousin in any way, and he and his friends continued to eat.

Later, as my cousin was riding home along Harvey Road with a pillion passenger, a car approached them from behind. Before they could do anything they were rear-ended and thrown from the cycle. As my cousin lay there for a split second, he recognised one of the passengers as one of the people who had caused trouble at the Ice Queen.

Luckily, neither he nor his friend was badly injured, although his friend received a very bad case of road rash. Fearing for their lives, my cousin and his friend ran off into the bushes. From a safe distance they watched as the car paused at the scene then sped away. Only a few days later, our summer student at the Mid-Ocean News, Jay Tucker, again only 16, was attacked and pulled from his bike in broad daylight while driving along the South Road in Paget. In ten seconds flat he watched as the thieves rode away with his bike. He wasn't hanging out at the Ice Queen or coming back from a nightclub. He didn't know his attackers. He was just driving home after work.

And the newspapers in the past couple of days have been full of similar tales. I know two people, at least, who have been the victims of crimes in the last two weeks. I don't know a lot of people. If crime is touching my life that closely, then it is touching almost everybody's life.

That is why it is astounding that Public Sfety Minister Terry Lister has appeared in a number of Royal Gazette articles seemingly advocating a softer approach to crime and criticising the former Operation Cleansweep for only arresting street people. And he says that crime is down in Bermuda. Oh really? Do you feel safer?

Minister Lister also expressed concern about the revolving door in the prisons. Young men go into prison and come out again, better criminals.

I TOO am concerned about this revolving door. Let's go back further. A Canadian teenager is raped and stabbed to death; one man gets five years after admitting being an accessory to murder, the other goes free.

A man robs a grocery store in Warwick. He's sentenced to drug counselling in Canada instead of jail time. After a month or so the man returns home because "it's too cold in Canada".

Minister Lister is absolutely right. The prison door turns far too quickly, but that doesn't mean we should just stop putting people in prison, we just need to keep them there longer.

At one stage the Government said it would not hire more police officers because it didn't want Bermuda to become a "police state". Better a police state than the criminal state that Bermuda is fast becoming.

There is a time and place to worry about the welfare of criminals. That time and place most assuredly comes after we've dealt with the welfare of victims and the safety of the community. It would be nice to see, for once, the Government expressing some concern for the victims of crime.

It had better wise up because crucial votes are sliding down the drain. The community is terrified and the well-being of criminals is the last thing on most people's minds.

OVER the weekend, one woman called a radio station and suggested that all young people have a police escort whenever they go anywhere on their bikes. This is a ridiculous suggestion, since there aren't enough police out there to deal with crime let alone provide an escort service. However, her comment demonstrated the level of fear and stress out there in the community. It's no longer safe to drive home after work.

Yes, drugs are a problem in Bermuda, and no, prison probably doesn't do much to cure the criminal. Whether rehabilitation works or not, the community still has to be kept safe from criminal mischief and violence. Prison is the best way to do this.

One way to cut back on the violence and crime in this community would simply be to improve the education system. A significant proportion of people in prison have some type of learning disability.

The mega secondary schools are doing nothing to alleviate the problem. We need to go back to small secondary schools where a child feels like an individual and not a number in the computer. We need to address behavioural and learning problems as soon as they rear up and not wait until the student reaches high school. We need to create individuals who are actually employable in all those positions that Mr. Lister is kindly holding for them.

We also need adequate drug treatment facilities that not only treat the criminal drug addict, but keep them off the streets until they are no longer a danger to society.

Let's save the softness for the victims of crime and get tougher on crime in this community.