The Sara Cox case came and went without altering the crucial Human Rights Act rulings that have strongly favoured, and indeed buttressed, the work of the PCC.The Communications Bill passed through Parliament without amendment, and with the integrity of our self-regulation untouched. Cannon to the left in the Communications Bill and the ghostly spectre of Ofcom. Cannon even from behind, manned by the monstrous regiment of celeb lawyers Well, we did better than Raglan. Cannon to the right of us from the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. When I became chairman on 31 March, the Press Complaints Commission bore more than a passing resemblance to the Light Brigade at Balaklava, with me pressed into the role of Lord Raglan. As ever, with crime, the fear of getting caught is the most effective deterrent of all.

Delivering good policing isn't as eye catching as antisocial behaviour orders or compulsory parenting orders, but it might just help.. When distressed residents call 999 the police do not arrive promptly enough to be of much use; when they do there seems little they can or want to do; inadequate effort is put into detecting the culprits, and there is protection against the threat of intimidation by yobs.If police resources were available there would be no need for ever more draconian sentencing or special measures such as curfews. Improvements in educational standards and opportunities could do the rest, but that will need still more of the patient, painstaking work that state schools have been engaged in for the past few years. Mr Blunkett, an excellent education secretary in Labour's first term, surprisingly paid little attention to that yesterday.Jobs, education and a decent built environment are thus part of the answer, but Mr Blair is right to identify the problem that many people complain about the failure of enforcement. Mr Blunkett and the police chiefs seem happy, as ever, to blame the courts for the persistence of some offenders' behaviour But in many cases it is a simple policing problem. In that context it might accurately, if strangely, be said that Gordon Brown has been the most successful home secretary since the war.

For Mr Brown's successful macro-economic polices and imaginative schemes such as Sure Start and the New Deal have done far more to get disruptive youths off the streets and crime down than any number of Mr Straw or Mr Blunkett's eye catching initiatives. However, the breakdown of community is not confined to notoriously badly built and designed tower blocks. Nowhere is this more starkly apparent than in former mining communities in the north of England and Wales. Where once there were thriving famously tightly knit communities of terraces and semi-detached houses, there is now joblessness, drugs and despair. The same applies to the rundown fishing towns and villages of north-east Scotland.Crime and antisocial behaviour stems largely - but not exclusively - from economic blight. Drug and alcohol addiction are medical rather than social problems, and better treated through rehabilitation than eviction or imprisonment.Still, the Government has to start somewhere and it is right to target neighbourhoods with the most intractable problems, the well known "sink" estates in the big cities, such as Birmingham, Sheffield and Manchester.