I am writing to congratulate the Oxford Mail for exposing the way police now hold back huge numbers of crimes from the media — and thus the public.

I am a freelance journalist based in the North East and I have spent most of my 23 years covering crime stories.

It is a tradition going back many years that police release basic details of major crimes to the media. This is to both warn the public and also to appeal for witnesses.

In recent years, I have noticed a disturbing trend for police forces to release fewer and fewer crimes.

My own local force of Northumbria is particularly bad. I have collected hundreds of examples of horrendous crimes, including sex attacks and armed robberies, that have been kept hidden for no good reason.

After a particularly "quiet" two weeks last Christmas and New Year, the force released just 27 incidents to the press — roughly two a day.

This is from one of Britain's busiest forces, which spends more than £1m a year on its press office.

I made an application under the Freedom of Information Act and found there had been more than 17,000 incidents during that period.

When I questioned this, the Deputy Chief Constable David Warcup wrote to tell me that all the crimes mentioned were held back for "operational reasons" and the force did not have to "further justify" this to me.

Obviously, forces cannot be expected to release every detail of every crime.

Likewise, it is understandable that personal details of crime victims are withheld.

However, there is no doubt they are now regularly hiding a huge number of serious crimes.

I am told this is because they are under instructions from the Home Office to reduce the "fear of crime".

In other words, they are censoring the news for political reasons.

More importantly, they are failing to warn the public what is happening in their area, while also missing out on a helpful way of catching criminals.

Keep up the good work.

NIGEL GREEN, Northumberland

Tell your crime correspondent not to worry about lack of information on crime being released to the public. It is not an indication of a new secret police policy.

There is a new system, which was introduced in the past couple of years by the Government.

All the information is recorded on a computer and then transferred to disc or laptop hard drive.

Then someone in authority loses the disc by posting it to the wrong place, leaving the laptop on a train or leaving a USB memory stick where anyone can find it and thence be aware of all the information. I think the Government introduced the system to help keep people occupied — then they would not have to worry about other things, which were happening at Westminster.

CHRIS PAYNE, George Street, Bicester

Why did the Oxford Mail made such a fuss of this story?

Surely, if the police are kept busy making statements to the public, then they're too busy to catch the criminals in the Oxford area? And if they're not catching criminals in the Oxford area, there would be even more incidents to report to the public. It's a vicious circle.

In your opinion piece you slam them for taking too long over bureaucracy, but more reports to the public would merely create more bureaucracy.

I'm sure the public would prefer police time to be spent catching criminals rather than just reporting it.

CLAIRE BOYD, Old Forge Close, Bledington, Chipping Norton