ANOTHER important prong in the fight against crime in East Lancashire was unveiled today as Blackburn and Darwen were chosen to be among the 12 towns and cities in the country piloting the government's "pathfinder" partnership initiative.

It is scheme bringing together the police, health chiefs, the probation service, the council and voluntary bodies to create a crime-smashing strategy - by pooling resources and ideas, compiling a crime and disorder audit, listening to residents' wants and fears and targeting anti-crime efforts where they are most needed.

In short, rather than the police responding to crime as it happens, this intelligence-backed approach will determine where crime is most prevalent, discover its causes, stamp it out and prevent it recurring.

It is a procedure that we must welcome - not least because, in East Lancashire, we know from the now nationally-famed success of our partnership approach to economic regeneration and urban renewal that these specially-focused multi-agency initiatives really do work.

And, under the wing of Jack Straw's Crime and Disorder legislation, the pathfinder partnership can do the same to combat crime in our region. Indeed, it is all the more encouraging that East Lancashire is to have this pilot project - when it has already been chosen to pioneer new ways of getting tough with young offenders and the magistrates courts in Blackburn and Burnley have been empowered to speed up justice.

Blackburn has also been selected as a test bed for the new "final warning" system that ends that of juvenile delinquents getting repeated cautions and it is - again with the partnership approach - setting up new youth offending teams, comprising police, the courts, the probation service, schools and other agencies, to nip criminal behaviour in the bud.

Home Secretary Jack Straw's Crime Reduction Strategy, unveiled this summer, put a strong emphasis at targeted efforts to reduce crime.

We are certain that, with these pioneering initiatives to put that approach to the test in East Lancashire, our region welcomes the opportunity of making them work - and looks forward to the proof that they do.

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