Ronke Phillips offers her analysis on the Met's crackdown on sex offences

It is radical, unprecedented and is bound to be controversial - the use of licensing laws to shut down pubs and clubs which have been associated with higher than average levels of rape and sexual assault.

The strategy is the initiatiave of DCI Mick Duthie, the Met's new head of Sapphire, the unit which deals with sex crimes.

He plans to:

• Use the licensing laws for the first time to shut down pubs and clubs which generate a high level of rape and sexual assault.

• Use covert police tactics to target men who have never been charged and convicted of rape, but where intelligence suggests they are perpetrators.

• Initiate a hard-hitting prevention campaign, to target male behaviour and speak to women about reducing their vulnerability.

• Increase supervision of his officers by restructuring Sapphire into five or six large regional teams.

Women's groups have dismissed the initiative as a "diversion". What's needed, according to campaigners, is thorough unbiased investigations and prosecutions so rapists are caught and convicted, and rape is discouraged.