David Blunkett, the home secretary, yesterday pledged to try to stop criminals like Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr profiting from their crimes. He was speaking after being challenged by the mother of one of Mary Bell's victims during a question-and-answer session in Newcastle.

June Richardson, whose four-year-old son, Martin Brown, was killed by Bell in 1968, asked Mr Blunkett why criminals were permitted to profit from their crimes by writing books.

At present there are no rules to stop convicted criminals from seeking a publishing deal.

Mrs Richardson said she was outraged when she discovered in 1998 that the author Gitta Sereny had paid Mary Bell a reported £50,000 for help in writing her book Cries Unheard.

Last month it was reported that Maxine Carr, who was jailed for conspiring to pervert the course of justice in the Soham murder case, had begun to write a book and was seeking a publisher.

Other well-known criminals to go into print include Lord Archer, who published a diary about his time in prison.

One high-profile former prisoner who has not put pen to paper is the Norfolk farmer Tony Martin, who was jailed for shooting dead a teenage burglar, although he has not ruled out writing his memoirs.

However, he caused controversy recently when it emerged he had cooperated with the writer John McVicar for the book Tony Martin, A Right to Kill?

Mrs Richardson, from Tyneside, was among an audience of more than 100 community workers and members of the public attending a question-and-answer session at the city's Playhouse Theatre with Mr Blunkett and members of his ministerial team.

"Why are we allowing people to profit from their crimes?" she asked the home secretary.

"I see Carr and Huntley intend to write a book about their awful crimes. Why are we letting the victims down by allowing them to profit from their crimes? We seem to have a system that does nothing for the victims."

Mr Blunkett pledged to do what he could to close the loophole that allowed criminals to write about their crimes. But he said it was a very complex issue, especially in the case of Mary Bell, who was not the author of the book Cries Unheard.

"We are endeavouring at the moment to stop a whole range of people from profiting by writing about their crimes," Mr Blunkett said.

"We do need to address this because we have got a number of people coming out of jail who are intending to write books at this very moment."

But he joked: "We had enough problems with Jeffrey Archer, let alone anyone else."

However, Mr Blunkett stressed that the answer did not lie with just banning convicted criminals from writing about their crimes because there were other profitable ways of telling their story.

"If you stop them writing books then they can go on television," he said. "There are also newspapers which will pay large sums of money for a story."

The home secretary and his ministerial team were in Newcastle to see what effect their reforms are having on local communities.

Mr Blunkett also used the occasion to announce a £13m pilot project across 10 police forces to allow more officers back on the beat by employing extra civilian support staff.