IT is little wonder that police and traders are celebrating today after the reign of terror by the dreadful and brutal serial thief Michael Aspin was brought to an end by his being banned from Accrington town centre for the next three years.

For if ever anyone needed putting on such a legal leash it was 25-year-old Aspin.

He had clocked up 115 convictions in the past eight years -- all but 10 for theft and shoplifting. And when he wasn't stealing from shops he was petrifying their staff -- to such an extent that he was described by a police chief as a "terrorist in the purist sense."

But if the Anti-Social Behaviour Order that was slapped on him by Hyndburn magistrates -- with the threat of up to six months' jail if he breaks its conditions -- is right and proper, it will still concern law-abiding members of the community that it takes the law so long to deal with the likes of him.

After all, he had proved himself to be a criminal menace for virtually all his adult life. But do we not see a reason for his being able to become so for so long in the complaint he raised in court when at long last he was fittingly dealt with -- that he was being picked on?

Indeed, he might well feel that is the case -- and others of his ilk might feel undeterred by his fate -- when it is seen that he is only the sixth person in East Lancashire to be hit by an Anti-Social Behaviour Order since they were introduced by the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act.

Is ours such an untroubled community that this is all the crackdown that is needed? Hardly. Indeed, the government promised that 5,000 ASBOs would be issued every year but last month figures showed that only 150 had been imposed nationwide in 22 months.

Such a token response -- by the local authorities whose job it is to seek these orders and by the police who have the power to push for them -- is not enough to truly deter.

We need an all-out drive against the likes of Michael Aspin.