Baroness Scotland looks at the programme to improve procedures so that offenders cannot slip through the cracks in the legal system

Crime and criminal justice are among people's biggest concerns - they want to feel safe and they want to know that offenders will be brought to justice.

We all know how corrosive crime can be, leaving victims feeling vulnerable, communities scarred and undermining our sense of civic society.

People want to feel that if they or someone they know come into contact with the criminal justice system - as a victim, witness, juror or as someone accused of an offence - that they can rely on it to deliver justice.

However, sadly this is not always the case, which is why the government is delivering a programme of reform to improve people's confidence and to ensure more offenders are brought to justice.

The need for reforms is clear.

Some 5.17 million crimes were recorded in 2000/01, but fewer than 20% of them resulted in an offender being brought to justice.

At every step, potential convictions are being lost and offenders allowed to fall through the gaps - often back into a life of crime.

Narrowing the justice gap is about reducing the chasm between the number of offences recorded and the number of offences resulting in a caution, conviction, or the offence being taken into consideration by the court.

The government's new national target is for 1.2 million offences to be brought to justice by 2005/06.

Each of the 42 local criminal justice boards has also been set local justice gap targets, requiring a minimum 5% improvement year on year.

Every board has been asked to put together its own inter-agency plan for narrowing the justice gap, spelling-out exactly what improvements are needed, and how they are going to be delivered.

Nationally, priorities include greater co-operation between criminal justice organisations and more action to tackle systemic weaknesses within the criminal justice system itself, such as the low number of witnesses and defendants actually attending court.

At the same time, more resources will be targeted on persistent offenders - the 10% of criminals responsible for around half of all serious crimes - and also on particular crimes that are on the rise, as with the recent street crime initiative.

Many of the proposals are already having a positive impact.

New charging arrangements, where the Crown Prosecution Service is on hand to provide pre-charge advice to police at the earliest opportunity, have been piloted with impressive results.

As a result, the right cases are now being prosecuted with the right charge first time around.

Similarly, work is also being done to ensure that when warrants for arrest are issued, they are enforced, and that the courts are given accurate and up-to-date information about defendants before granting bail.

By simply improving the flow of information between the various agencies involved, we will close many of the loopholes that for too long have been used by defendants to play the system and escape justice.

Police forces are also being encouraged to improve the quality of the evidence they put on file.

The recently launched effective trial management programme aims to reduce the number of ineffective trials and provide improved services to victims and witnesses.

All this action means there are now practical deliverable measures under way to tackle the problems caused by persistent offenders and to get to the roots of the weaknesses in the system.

We now have a real opportunity to narrow the justice gap, and I will do everything I can to make sure we get there - together.

Baroness Scotland is the Home Office minister of state for the criminal justice system and law reform