AFTER listening to Ray Mallon expound his crime reduction strategy inside Middlesbrough's frighteningly Gothic - although rather wonderful - Town Hall, I stepped outside and walked past the modern crown court buildings.

Gathered outside the court doors, gasping to light up a fag, was a newly-released defendant and his family group. You could tell who the defendant was because he wore the ill-fitting suit saved specially for weddings, funerals and appearances in the dock.

One of the woman in the group, with smoke streaming out of her nostrils, bellowed at the defendant: "So yous has pled guilty to something you didna do to avoid going to jail."

The defendant inhaled so deeply it looked as if his lungs would burst. Forcing a spout of smoke between his pursed lips, he nodded and muttered: "Yep." A proud grin broke across his features.

So, if he'd pleaded not guilty to something he had not done, he would have gone to jail; if he'd pleaded guilty to something he had done, he would not have gone to jail.

Sometimes it is very hard to understand the concept of justice.

ON the way to Ray Mallon's crime reduction strategy, I had another brush with something that has been worrying me for weeks: the speed camera on the A66.

Of course, speeding is wrong and it is dangerous - but in an attempt to stop the danger, the speed camera has created a danger all of its own.

The A66 is a fast dual carriageway between Darlington and Middlesbrough. The slowcoaches travel at 65mph, everyone else goes over 70mph, quite a few over 80mph.

Four or five green lay-bys have been built so that the speed camera can theoretically pop up and surprise the speeders. But every regular driver knows that only two lay-bys are ever used: one on the westbound carriageway between the two Long Newton turn-offs, the other opposite on the eastbound.

So everyone comes careering around the bend into the Long Newton stretch and then, seeing where the camera is, slams on their brakes. Then, they all feel compelled to pull over and form an orderly queue in the inside lane.

You can tell the newcomer to the district: seeing the traffic part in front of him like the Red Sea, he puts his foot down and speeds off joyfully - only to spot the camera at the last second, causing him to brake violently and head towards the inside lane.

Last Wednesday morning, all the slowing down and pulling over caused a couple of tall lorries to sway dangerously, two horns to blow angrily, one finger to shoot up aggressively. Everyone was nose to tail at 59.5mph.

And, as soon as the tyres cross the last of the gradation lines on the road that means the car is beyond the camera's short-sighted eye, the vehicles are back to 70mph and beyond as the drivers try to make up those crucial seconds lost when they were crawling beneath 60mph.

If anyone else erected a device by the roadside which caused people to pull over and slow down - say, a TV showing a porn channel for the men drivers - they'd be ordered to remove it because it was a traffic hazard. A single speed camera, though, is perfectly legal even though it is just as dangerous.