JUST 24 crooks are behind the majority of crime in Swindon.

Police have drawn up a list of Swindon's worst offenders and say they are targeting the 23 men and one woman to the point of intrusion.

The three strands to dealing with the prolific and priority offenders involve the police, the Drugs Intervention Programme and the Youth Offending Team.

Chief Insp Paul Jennings said: "These are the people who are Swindon's most prolific offenders.

"They are people who are responsible for a great deal of our volume crime.

"We make every effort to proactively police them, using various different tactics to the point of intrusion really.

"If they happen to be on bail we make sure we are visiting their addresses and policing any curfews or exclusion areas looking to catch them committing any type of misdemeanour to bring them back into the criminal justice system and out of the pubic arena."

Pictures of the prolific offenders are circulated at every police briefing and officers are given peel off stickers of the individuals so they can recognise them while on patrol.

However, police would not release the list of names to the Advertiser.

The offenders receive a letter explaining the position they are in and what it means.

"The national picture is that 10 per cent of people are responsible for 90 per cent of the crime," Mr Jennings said.

"While we get these people into the criminal justice system it's important to recognise that they are drug dependent.

"That dependency is so high they are driven within their chaotic lifestyle to obtain drugs and they will commit all manner of crimes to produce the cash to buy drugs.

"That will include anything from shoplifting, car crime, street robberies and dwelling and commercial burglaries."

Tackling the drug dependency is where the Drugs Intervention programme and its manager Sue D'Amico come into it.

"The aim is to engage with any drug using offender at any point during the route through the criminal justice system to encourage them into treatment and then retain them in treatment," Sue said.

The list of the 24 worst offenders is devised by the police, the DIP, probation service and the Youth Offending Team.

"All these people on the list commit a lot of crime and they all tend to be drug users," Sue said. "When they are nominated as a prolific and priority offender it depends on how much crime they're committing.

"We want to target the biggest offenders with the aim of getting them into treatment.

"They are responsible for the majority of the burglaries, car crime and everything else so these are our main target group when it comes to reducing offending.

"These are the guys we want in treatment because they are all class A drug users offending to support their habit."