A ZERO tolerance for crime is something people of this Bailiwick embraced many years before Mayor Rudy Giuliani took the concept to the streets of New York.

The difference, of course, is in scale. While the failed Republican presidential candidate was attempting to stem the flow of knifings and shootings by coming down hard on minor thefts, assaults and burglaries, our community simply refused to accept that any crime, no matter how small, was acceptable.

And the result was a proud boast that the island was relatively crime-free. Front doors were left unlocked, cars with their keys in the ignition.

Those days, sadly, have gone.

And while there are several major crimes each year now, it is at the lowest level of offence that the change is most noticeable. Petty thefts, vandalism and criminal damage are detailed all too often in police reports.

A bus shelter, bench or public monument is an invitation, it seems, to some to show their destructive side. Homes are targeted with graffiti and stones.

It is still unacceptable.

But is it reversible?

For Deputy Dave Jones the answer is clearly yes. If the ‘hand-wringing, liberal, elite’ could be pushed to one side in favour of a tougher ‘hang ’em and flog ’em’ approach we’d teach the thugs a lesson they wouldn’t forget.

It’s an attractive vision for many, straight out of the pages of The Daily Mail.

But, as successive generations have learned, it is impossible to turn back time. We cannot instil the values of yesteryear on a modern society. We are where we are.

Human rights are now enshrined in the laws of Europe, Britain and our island. Many are vital and laudable improvements on what went before.

In that light, bringing back corporal punishment in the home and in schools is as retrograde and unacceptable as bringing back the birch, the stocks and public hangings.

Society has moved on. And as we read in horror of the tales from Haut de la Garenne, where authority was invested with too much unquestioned power, that is sometimes no bad thing.