DRUG dependence is at the root of a massive amount of crime.

It's generally agreed that the majority of street robberies and burglaries are now carried out by people desperate to get cash to fund their addiction.

With this in mind the call by Father Jim McCartney yesterday makes a lot of sense.

Fr McCartney, chief executive and founder of Blackburn-based THOMAS, told the organisation's annual awards ceremony that the destructive cycle of drug addiction and crime would continue unless offenders received rehabilitative treatment.

Such treatment is not compulsory in prison and Fr McCartney says either it should be or people should go into rehabilitation programmes in the community as an alternative.

THOMAS, which has an excellent record in helping people off drugs, has been receiving prisoners released on licence to enrol on their own drugs rehabilitation programme.

Some people obviously have to be locked up because of the scale or violence of their crimes.

But there seems little sense in not treating the root of the main problem, drug addiction. It is not going to disappear in prisons where drugs are often widely available.

Cure is however no soft option. If people leave the programme they must, as Fr McCartney suggests, be returned immediately to prison.