Letter

The principle of Bryn Melyn, Mr McNutt (' 2 Jan) claims that 'less than 20 per cent of his clients re-offend within three months of completing the course. . ' By what miraculous method of research does he know the percentage of those who re-offend? They would have to be supervised 24 hours a day for Mr McNutt to be able to make that claim. Even a claim of a rate of reconviction ofless than 20 per cent would be suspect; only 7 per cent of crimes are detected and those that are would probably be processed well after three months.

Peter Coad

Bristol