Express & Star comment: Where's the common sense in making crime victims pay?

After going through the heartache of having your car stolen, you get a phone call with the good news that your pride and joy has been found by the police.

Even better, it is ready for you to come and collect from an impound yard.

You get yourself down there and hold out your hand to receive the keys – but instead an officer hands you a hefty bill for 'recovery and storage' charges.

Incredibly, this scenario is played out up and down the country every single day, as police forces boost their coffers on the back of the misfortune of the general public.

For example, Staffordshire Police have charged drivers the best part of £1 million in fees over the last seven years.

More than 5,700 people who were unfortunate enough to have their vehicles stolen were then slapped with a bill to cover the force's costs of retrieval and storage.

This is absolute madness, and it is little wonder that critics see the system as a cash cow where victims are being punished further in order to help make up for police budget shortfalls.

The Express & Star regularly reports on cases where victims of crime are treated with disdain by this country's broken criminal justice system.

Light sentences have become the norm in a society where the authorities bend over backwards to make sure they are adhering to the strict doctrine of political correctness.

We probably should not be surprised that the victims of car crime are being forced to pay in order to get their property back.

There are undoubtedly circumstances where the police incur significant costs while recovering a stolen vehicle.

But it is scandalous that as a matter of course, the victims of crime have to pay.

Talk about adding insult to injury.

It should be noted that while all this is going on car crime is rocketing year-on-year.

So how about this for a novel idea?

Perhaps the police could devote more time and resources to actually preventing vehicle thefts in the first place?

Then again, we live in an age when adopting a common sense approach is almost an alien concept for the powers that be.

Being a victim of crime is bad enough on its own, without being charged for it on top.