IF THE slogan "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" helped Labour to power, then Tony Blair is obviously aware that putting it into practice will help to keep it there.

For in today placing the fight against crime high on the government's list of priorities for its second year of office, he is matching the public's view of its importance.

However, the so-called zero-tolerance procedure -- to be focused in the "hot-spot" policing of 25 target towns and cities over the next three years, together with a blitz on car crime -- is not without some drawbacks.

There is a risk that this all-out approach could turn the targeted communities against the police if they become regarded as heavy-handed, particularly when the drop in the crime rate brought about by these tactics seems to make their outlook more firm than necessary.

And if that is a Catch-22 outcome of the targeted use of zero-tolerance methods, so, too, is the risk of them reducing crime in the areas where they are employed, but simply shifting them to those where they are not.

The ideal, which finite police resources could hardly sustain, is the blanket approach of zero tolerance being employed everywhere.

But meantime the hope, it seems, is that reducing crime in these areas will eventually free-up police resources for a stronger approach outside the initial target zones.

Yet even if this inevitably falls short of the unrealisable ideal, there is no harm done in sending the message to the crime-plagued blackspots and to the criminals preying on them that the tough crackdown is coming.

Similarly, the associated drive to cut car crime by a third over five years will encourage large sectors of the community that the tough-on-crime slogan is being enacted simply because so many people have experience as victims of these sort of offences.

But support for zero tolerance and belief in its effectiveness will only come about if people see that zero tolerance applies in the form of the punishment delivered by the courts.

And since Home Secretary Jack Straw seems to favour the greater use of non-custodial sentences, the public may have doubts whether the government is being tough enough on deterring crime.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.