A "band of prolific offenders'' in and out of jail's "revolving door'' are causing huge crime swings in Bermuda, a top Police chief said yesterday.

And Detective Supt. Vic Richmond said there were clear "inadequacies'' in the Prisons' rehabilitation process and he had seen little improvement in the 32 years he has served as a Police officer.

But in releasing 1998's crime statistics, he said the overall snapshot was "positive and healthy'' since total figures were down on 1997.

Until improvements were made to stop the same handful of offenders repeatedly committing crime sprees as soon as they were released from prison, statistics would continue to depend on who was on the loose, he said.

"In a small community like Bermuda crime numbers are very much influenced by who's in and who's out of prison,'' he said.

"There is a tremendous fluctuation in these categories of crime depending on which of these prolific offenders are incarcerated and which are not.'' Asked how this reflected on prison programmes he said: "The revolving door system I have experienced in 32 years of policing here exists without really any improvement. I tend to think that there are inadequacies in the rehabilitation process.'' Prisons' Commissioner Edward Dyer last night declined to respond to the criticisms.

Det. Supt. Richmond also hit back at the author of a Canadian "Boycott Bermuda'' web site which "incorrectly'' used Bermuda's official crime statistics to conclude there was more crime per head here than in Canada.

The problem lay in the different methods of recording incidents in the two countries which made contrasting the figures like comparing "oranges and apples''.

Bermuda's Police recorded per-offence statistics while Canada's, until a recent review, had logged per-incident numbers which left their total crime rate deceptively lower, since a single incident could involve several crimes.

Det. Supt. Richmond said Canada's incident-based system -- which last year was thrown out in favour for a system more like Bermuda's -- was "cheating''.

Good news from the latest figures was that violent crime, thefts, break-ins and vehicle removals for 1998 all occurred less than in the previous year.

Big drops in sexual assaults, wounding, firearm offences, and armed robberies were also recorded.

Assaults on police swung up by 37.3 percent while handbag snatching was up by a massive 54.2 percent and removed cars increased by 72.4 percent to 50 incidents.

Crime stats are `positive, healthy' Burglaries and house break-ins each happened almost ten percent more than in 1997, despite overall break-in offences being lower than the previous year due to less attempted burglary, and fewer stores and offices targeted.

Det. Supt. Richmond said the hike in assaults on Police was due to a greater presence on the street which meant officers were more vulnerable.

He said it should be kept in perspective that there were just 59 such cases in 1997 and 81 in 1998.

CRIME CRM