EVERY decent person in Britain should be celebrating a very good week for justice this week after the conviction and jailing of two men for the racist murder in London of Stephen Lawrence in 1993.

We agree with Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who is one of our local MPs, when he says: “It was a despicable and an appalling crime and all right-thinking people will be pleased that two of the perpetrators have now been brought to justice after such a long time.”

However, it’s also worth noting this is not the only history-defying triumph for law and order we have witnessed this week. Another came closer to home on Tuesday and it concerned Marlow, which is coincidentally in Mr Grieve’s constituency area.

In 1989, almost 23 years ago, a young woman was raped and indecently assaulted at the railway station there. Two years earlier in 1987, there had been a similar attack on a woman in Wembley.

Who would have thought then all those long years ago that the culprit would be brought to justice in the year 2012? But that’s exactly what happened when 51-year-old John Walker from Hemel Hempstead stood in the dock this week at Oxford Crown Court and pleaded guilty to the crimes.

As police said, offenders who think they have got away with a crime over the passage of time need to think again. Criminals can no longer sleep easy in their beds just because a few years have elapsed. This is thanks to the advances in forensic science and to the sensible change of the double jeopardy law, which allowed people cleared of crimes to be tried again if new evidence comes to light.

The police and the Crown Prosecution Service have been criticised, quite rightly, in the past over letting criminals slip through their fingers. This week, they should take a bow.

Newspapers such as the Bucks Free Press have often accused the justice system of being too soft. But perhaps the start of 2012 is the beginning of an era in which victims can have a new-found confidence in the law. Let’s hope so.