Letter: Criminal nonsense

Sir: Roger Levitt, you report, left 'debts' of pounds 34m (27 November). He was ordered to perform 180 hours community service. He has also, poor chap, been banned from business for seven years.

I have worked in prisons and still try to persuade lawbreakers that there is right and wrong, a subject much debated this very week, but after all the wretchedness of police behaviour - West Midlands, IRA allegations and the rest - I have to give up.

Can someone convince me that what Mr Justice Laws (is Dickens involved in the name?) said makes sense? That such profound criminality should be so absolved is acceptable? On page two of the same edition a man who took a toy gun into a building society, and gave himself up consumed with guilt, got four-and-a-half years.

Yours in desperation,

J. E. THOMAS

Nottingham