The politics of law and order are entirely about spin. Not just partly. Entirely. There is no field of political conflict where impression more fully eclipses reality. The two may not always be at odds. Some impressions are correct. Crime has doubled over the last 20 years, for example. That is a fact. Politicians' belief that the public wants only heavier sentencing is another truth that's not entirely fanciful. But the raw material Jack Straw and Ann Widdecombe are handling when they promote this as an election issue is not fact but propaganda, otherwise known as spin. Consider the opening bids made yesterday. Mr Straw, introducing Labour's 10-year plan, said that his record on crime was "the best of any incoming government for 50 years". Sounds impressive. Ms Widdecombe countered that the Tory record from 1993-97 was the best four-year performance any outgoing government could show. Also, relatively, true. But what voter can begin to absorb, let alone believe, either statement, when every party is busy culling statistics to show that things have never been better, or, alternatively, worse in an area of policy where, depending when you start and what you cover and how you exclude and where you shade the figures, both claims are defensible?  Is crime going up? It depends what you're talking about. My colleagues Polly Toynbee and David Walker, in their valuable audit of the government, Did Things Get Better? (Penguin 6.99) take a   shot at it. Burglary? Down 21% in 2000. Car thefts? Down 15%, along with a 16% fall in thefts from cars. Crimes of violence fell by 4%. But street robbery? Up 14%. Clear-up rates? "Haven't improved since 1997", according to a worried memo from Straw's political adviser leaked this weekend. Ah, but what about convictions? "Up by 13%," according to Straw on the Today programme yesterday.  Such statistics will fly about in the coming weeks. For the Tories are determined to make crime one of the biggest issues. It's one of the few they've got, perhaps the only one where the glass of governance will always reliably be seen as half empty not half full. For every stat, there may be an explanation that qualifies its meaning, as the Home Office's own research department often shows. What, why, when, where, how? You could write a book on each question applied to every crime, and people do. But in the politics of law and order, sophistication, however true, will always be outgunned by simplicity, however false.  This is made easier by public ignorance. In 1998 the British Crime Survey reported that the public thought judges' sentencing was too lenient. Four out of five people believed they were out of touch with what "ordinary people think". Questioned further, these ordinary people proved startlingly uninformed. Over half underestimated by at least 30% the sentences that were actually handed out. They believed half of male rapists were sent to prison, whereas the actual figure was 97%. House burglars and muggers   were similarly thought to be let off, when well over half in each category went to jail. Such are the sometimes grotesque misperceptions on which the reputation of the judiciary as a soft touch is based. Yet that's the image brainlessly cultivated by the tabloid press, which then finds its inescapable way into the critique and policies of ministers.  These policies are not always foolish. Serious experts are always trying to get to grips with the aberrations of social and human behaviour. The Thatcher-Major government passed a criminal justice act every year for so long that the later statutes began to undo what the earlier ones had done. The Blair government has a mixed record with its own creative initiatives. Both curfew orders and anti-social behaviour orders, much brooded on and ostensibly reasonable, have failed to convince the people in the courts and on the ground, and have come to almost nothing. The latest proposed reforms also have something to be said for them. Explicitly permitting judges to take account of previous convictions when settling a sentence is a rational idea. It addresses the prime problem thrown up by the latest fashionable analysis, the familiar theme that much   crime is committed by no more than 100,000 people. The package looks like serious action. It's intended to be so. It should spin well, though the Tories will, as easily and bewilderingly, spin against it.  But through the murk and counter-murk three conclusions stare out, which confront ministers and their opponents with challenges that spinning doesn't adequately address. First, the best things the government wants to try will cost money. Yesterday's package is priced at 700m. Can this be enough to create the new custodial and semi-custodial regimes ministers talk of, pay courts to work twice as hard to accelerate hearings, and seriously increase police manpower all over the country? Of all remedies for deterrence and detection, common across all these confusing stats and counter-stats, a bigger police force is by far the most persuasive. Quite why Straw has so conspicuously failed to keep promises about police recruitment is a complicated mystery. It may not be entirely about money. But money will help. Is the Treasury committed to providing it for this vastly ambitious programme? Or are we watching mere propaganda sufficient unto May 3?  Second, though Straw, to show his all-round vision, stressed the causes of crime as much as crime itself, and commended the government's education and employment programmes, there's a hole at the heart of the picture. While offering drugs as an explanation for such crime problems   as he will admit to, he won't address the drug laws as a focus for reform, despite pressure and expert argument from those who are just as concerned and responsible as politicians. Decriminalising cannabis would wipe out a certain amount of crime at a stroke, freeing up police and courts for other priorities. The spinners dare not look at it.  Third, they dictate that prisons must go on blithely multiplying. Two of the less disputable current statistics are a) that Britain has the highest proportion of its population in prison of any country in Europe, and b) that, in a league table of crime as experienced by victims, England and Wales, with 58 crimes per 100 inhabitants, came out joint first in the industrialised world. No accountable politician is willing to make a connection between these profoundly interesting trends. The lord chief justice, the inspector of prisons, and the director of the prison service have all recently delivered clinical and passionate critiques of prison. The electoral auctioneers dare not change the terms of the debate.  One reason for this is that spinners can only deal with the lowest denominator of opinion, however ignorant. But the spinner always, more or less, lies. A more fruitful approach is available. The beginning of wisdom in the politics of law and order would be to understand that, since nobody can sort out one spinner from another, someone might start the arduous business of addressing the truth.