THE feelings of exasperation, annoyance and frustration expressed today by police and East Lancashire MP at the slap-on-the-wrist sentence given to a teenage menace caught breaking an anti-social behaviour order will be shared by everyone aching for crime to be met by firmness.

So too will the sardonic sentiment that toughness on crime and its causes prevails more in rhetoric than in the courts -- when the punishment meted out by Hyndburn magistrates to persistent troublemaker 18-year-old Lee Finglass was just 24 hours in jail.

Indeed, "slap on the wrist" is perhaps too strong a term for this ludicrously lenient and token penalty. For Finglass actually served only half of it. He was freed on the spot by the bench because he had already spent the night before in the police cells after being arrested in Accrington town centre.

His being there was not just a violation of the ASBO imposed on him by magistrates in March, but also a flagrant one -- for he was hanging out of the window of a car being driven at night along town-centre Church Street.

And Finglass had absolutely no right to be there. He was barred for three years from entering the town centre between 6pm and 6am. For in addition to being involved in 26 offences entailing theft, burglary and criminal damage since 1996, he was a notorious drunken and violent night-time troublemaker in the town-centre.

But what fear will Finglass -- and, importantly, louts like him -- have of ASBO restraints if breaching them earns no more than a night's bed and breakfast at the nick?

Hyndburn -- through the council and the police -- has done singularly more than many other areas seek ASBOs and make them a potent weapon against the curse of yobbism and, in this case, the magistrates' failure to play their part is not only disappointing, but also a slap in the face for natural justice and the public's expectations of them.