Letter: Police, thieves and fast cars

LAST YEAR, while undergoing police driver training, my colleagues and I stopped at a local motor-racing circuit to change drivers. The circuit was being used by a group similar to that described by Lady Moorea Black (Letters, 6 December).

While we were being taught in a fairly old family saloon, the young offenders, who had qualified for their course by committing multiple car thefts, were undergoing driver-training in rather new high-performance Fords.

What the instructors thought they were achieving I do not know. The young offenders thought they were being taught better 'getaway' driving.

One does not envy the dilemma of the courts. Do they imprison offenders, thereby giving them the opportunity to learn how to 'pick a car lock' more quickly, or do they send them on courses such as these, where they can learn to drive stolen cars more quickly?

Clive Harfield

Totton, Hampshire