Blair crack down on 'career criminals'

"Career criminals" face tougher community punishments once they leave prison, the Government has announced.

Under new measures unveiled by Prime Minister Tony Blair and Home Secretary John Reid are plans for prolific offender licences to ban ex-cons from mixing with former associates and which are punishable by up to three years in prison.

Mr Blair said: "They are not an alternative to prison. They are in addition to prison. There are 20,000 more prison places than there were in 1997 and we are building another 8,000.

"But we have to ensure that, when people leave prison, they do not rebound straight back in. These people have serious problems and targeting the offender means taking those problems seriously."

A "hard core" of around 100,000 miscreants is believed to be responsible for half of all crime committed in England and Wales with around 5,000 of those thought to commit one crime in every ten.

Mr Blair also announced that powers to seize ill-gotten gains will be extended to cover assets including cars, saying: "Anything thought might be a useful accessory for crime, like a car, could be seized.

"So could any goods that might reasonably be thought to have been bought from the proceeds of crime."

The review also backs "early intervention" by identifying at a very young age children at risk of going off the rails - previously labelled "Baby Asbos".

Conservative Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said the moves are a "last-minute grandstanding attempt by Mr Blair in the dying days of his premiership".

His Liberal Democrat counterpart Nick Clegg said "obsessive pursuit of headlines" had done little to tackle crime or its causes.

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