How on earth does our legal system manage to throw up a succession of out-of-touch, highly-educated fools? Lord Phillips is just the latest in a line of top judges fixated on the well-being of convicted criminals rather than the imposition of law and order.

Anyone who has been keeping up with recent events knows that there has been a series of serious crimes committed by people who might well have been in prison but were not. John Monckton, the banker killed on his own doorstep in front of his wife, was attacked by Damien Hanson, 24, who had been been given early release three months earlier from a 12 year sentence for attempted murder.

Young Mary-Ann Leneghan was subjected to a three-hour ordeal of rape and torture before being stabbed to death. Four of the six young men who attacked her and a friend of hers, were "under supervision in the community". Then there were the deaths of Robert Symons, a teacher, in London, and the killing of jeweller Marian Bates in Nottingham. All these people were killed by people who were not in jail but who might have been. They might have been, that is, if the government and judges like Lord Phillips had not taken the view that fewer criminals should be in jail.

Lord Phillips says he is concerned about prison overcrowding. That is a fair point in tself. But it is illogical to take this as a reason for not sending dangerous men in jail. The logical answer is to call for the building of more prisons. Why doesn't the Lord Chief Justice do that?

The one and only time when recorded crime in Britain fell was after Michael Howard became Home Secretary and declared 'prison works'. The capacity of British prisons jumped by nearly half in only four years as a result of his efforts. He did all he could to tip the balance in court cases in favour of justice and against 'not guilty' verdicts based on technical or legallistic excuses.

Lawyers seem to have got something against punishment such as prison. They object that Britain already imprisons a higher percentage of its population than any other western European country. It does not seem to occur to them that the reason for this is that we have a higher incidence of crime than most other European countries. It is therefore absolutely right that we should imprison more. Incidentally, they also avert their eyes from the fact that there are plenty of other countries in the world which imprison far more criminals than we do, including the USA and Russia.

Violent crime here is bad and getting worse. It is true that the British Crime Survey, which the government likes to quote, claims the exact opposite. Unfortunately this survey, once regarded as the best guide to crime, has gradually become wholly unbelievable. It depicts a situation getting enormously better in every possible way. The figures are totally at variance with our experiences and the figures for recorded crime which show, for example, that murders have risen by a fifth over the past decade. Serious wounding and 'other acts endangering life' have nearly doubled. Admittedly there have been changes to the way these things are recorded, but after allowing for these changes, there has still been a major increase in recorded life-threatening crime.

The fundamental reasons for the rise in violent crime doubtless lies in profound changes in our society such as the breakdown of family life. Half of those in prison ran away from home as children. Those may be the underlying 'causes of crime'. But it is not the role of judges to try to put all that right. All they can do, like the police, is to help in the fight against actual crime.

What they must do, willingly and for the protection of us all, is put serious and persistent criminals in jail. If they lack - as Lord Phillips appears to do - the necessary courage and determination to protect honest citizens, they should get out of the law enforcement business altogether and leave it to people who think protecting young men like Tom Grant is the most vital part of their job.