Ian Holland, a consultant at Glasgow's Southern General, is one of seven city surgeons who try, valiantly, to reconstruct faces. They don't always succeed.

He said: "Sometimes we use old photos. There will always be some bit of bone that isn't damaged and we work from there, bit by bit."

Mr Holland and his colleagues operate on someone in Glasgow an average of every six hours, every day of the year. They try to fix the damage done by knives, razors, bats, fists, kicks and, very occasionally, innocent accidents. More than a thousand patients are sent to maxillofacial surgery every year as a result of violence in Glasgow alone - and the figure is rising. Only a fraction is reported to the police.

"If somebody told me the things we see every weekend, I wouldn't believe them," Mr Holland said. "I used to be surprised. I am not any more, but it is still really sad. Some of these people live in a completely different world.

"We had a guy in a few weeks ago. Somebody had taken a hammer to him. One side of his face was mush. "Another guy came in with a laceration seven-or-eight centimetres long across his cheek. He just left. He said he had to go and sort out the guy that had done that to him. He never came back: he must have just got a couple of stitches somewhere to stop his face falling apart."

Back in his native England, there is not as much work for Mr Holland as there is on the Clyde.

South of the border they still throw punches and still break jaws, but, despite some high-profile stabbings, the English, say doctors, are far less likely to reach for a knife. To be fair, so too are people in much of Scotland; young men who drink and use knives are still very much concentrated in west central Scotland.

Scotland's broken faces say far, far more about the volume of violence in the nation than any police statistic. Detectives now believe that just 30% of violent crime is reported and officially tallied in the annual statistical returns. They know that because of the scores kept by doctors like Mr Holland.

He said: "I know when someone has been cut by a knife, even if they don't say or say they can't remember what happened because they were so drunk. After all, I cut people for a living."

Government politicians, unsurprisingly, prefer the official police figures to those based on doctors' estimates. Labour ministers for months have been boasting of a drop in violent crime.

Official figures were down in 2005-06. True, the previous year had seen Glasgow again named as one of Europe's most murderous cities. The trouble with official crime figures is that they can yo-yo from year to year. Early indications, in the west at least, suggest they will be up again in 2006-07, at least for murder - the easiest violent crime to count. There were 60 murders in Strathclyde between April and December 2006, 19 more than in the last nine months of 2005. Officially, reported attempted murders were up too - to nearly 300.

Most experts believe that it will take a generation to turn around Scotland's "blades and booze" culture and pay little attention to swings from year to year in official figures.

In many communities, politicians talking about a fall in violent crime are greeted with scorn. "People just look out of their windows and think they are idiots," said one senior police officer. The same politicians, however, get a much better reception when they start to sound tough on violence and knives.

Sentences for carrying a knife have practically doubled since tougher new guidelines were introduced by the prosecutors last year. Many would like to see even harsher penalties.

One such person is Scott Breslin, who was paralysed after being stabbed in the neck six years ago when he was just 16. The youngster, from Penilee in Glasgow, was attacked after finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. He has no sympathy for anybody caught with a weapon.

He said: "If people are carrying knives, they have the intention of using them. There's no other reason for carrying them. Doubling the penalty for carrying a knife is good, but it should be even higher."

While welcoming harsh treatment for offenders, many police officers are beginning to think it will take more than law and order to cut knife crime.

Last month John Carnochan, the detective chief superintendent who leads Scotland's Violence Reduction Unit, said he thought 1000 new health visitors would do more to stop long-term crime than 1000 new police officers.

The new buzzwords among the professionals are "early years". Many in law enforcement are increasingly looking at violent crime as a public health issues, not just a criminal matter. Early deaths, or the scarring Mr Holland tries to repair, are hurting the economies and health records of Scotland's poorest communities.

Officers, from beat bobbies to chiefs, want to see interventions in troubled families long before children go to nursery, hence Mr Carnochan's call for 1000 health visitors. He didn't pick the figure by accident.

At least two of the main parties want to see an extra 1000 police officers. All the mainstream parties, at least ahead of the elections, appear to be sticking to a straightforward recipe to fight violent crime: more police and more jail.

There is just one snag with that policy. It doesn't seem to work, at least not in the long term.

Professor Elliot Currie, one of America's foremost experts in crime and punishment, has heard all the arguments before in his own country. "I find it really discouraging," he admitted yesterday. "Being a criminologist for 30 years and given all the research all over the world, it frustrates me greatly to see this knee-jerk leaning towards imprisonment.

"In the US we imprison more people than anywhere else in the industrial world. The US also has far and away the highest level of violent crime in the industrial world."

Proffesor Currie, who teaches at the University of California in Irvine, thinks the time has long since passed for politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to come up with something a bit more imaginative, "to be bold", and scale up existing and successful programmes of tough community sentences and restorative justice.

Speaking after a tour of Govan in Glasgow, where police and community workers are working hard to contain knife-wielding territorial street gangs and underage drinking, Mr Currie said: "I think the roots of that have to do with the level of hopelessness among kids.

"To stomp some other kid to death you really have to live among some extreme bleakness of life.

"They need to think they belong to something other than a territorial violent organisation."

In Govan's Southern General, Mr Holland was today beginning another busy clinic dealing with the weekend's tally of face injuries. "I should be out of a job," he said. "There is no way Glasgow should even need a single full-time consultant doing what I do."

WHAT THE PARTIES SAY

Labour

Officials failed to respond to a request for policies on crime and drugs. But Labour ministers have helped toughen sentences for knife carriers, claim to have recruited record police numbers and have encouraged new partnership between criminal justice and other agencies.

Conservative

Recruit 1500 police officers. Released sex offenders to undergo lie-detector tests and track them using satellites. "Three strikes and you're out" rule for persistent offenders. End automatic early release and build more prison space. Extra £100m a year in drug rehabilitation.

SNP

Recruit 1000 police officers. Establish task force integrating the crime and drug enforcement agency with prosecutors and technical experts. Stop irresponsible promotion and illegal sales of alcohol. Restore Airborne Initiative, reducing reoffending among youngsters.

LibDem

Recruit 1000 community police officers. Replace very short-term prison sentences with tougher community sentences. Crack down on knife crime. Involve young people in cutting crime with Youth Panels. Create Scottish Custody and Rehabilitation Service.

SSP

New police bodies to keep forces accountable. Free heroin on prescription to reduce crime. Zero tolerance for violence against women, children and vulnerable people. Reduce prison population by expanding alternatives to custody for offenders not a danger to the public.

Greens

Programme of restorative justice, putting victims' needs at the centre of the criminal justice system. Treat drug misuse as a health issue, supporting rehabilitation and targeting root causes. Focus on early intervention, tackling crime in a preventative way.

Solidarity

Establish care package guaranteeing help for all drug users within seven days of seeking treatment. Ban air rifles, pistols and pellet guns through registered gun clubs or by pest control officers. Re-think sentencing based on rehabilitation and restorative justice.

Senior Citizens' Unity Party

Manifesto has five core points, all of which relate directly to pensioners. John Swinburne, MSP, said: "In relation to drugs, rehabilitation is probably the most important part. With crime, a lack of respect and discipline seems to be prevalent."

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