Some of Britain's most high-profile victims of crime were launching a nationwide petition today.

Denise Fergus - the mother of murdered toddler James Bulger - was due to help unveil the new campaign by the Victims of Crime Trust.

She was also expected to be joined by Sara Payne, whose eight-year-old daughter Sarah disappeared nearly four years ago while playing with her brothers and sister in a West Sussex cornfield, and was found murdered 16 days later.

The charity will claim that just '18.66 is spent helping each victim of crime, while about '30,000 is spent each year keeping a prisoner behind bars.

More than 60 relatives of victims of murder and other terrible crimes were launching the petition in central London in a bid to boost support for crime victims, including Richard Taylor, whose son Damilola bled to death in a stairwell on the North Peckham Estate in November 2000 after being stabbed in the thigh with a piece of broken glass.

The group was also expected to include Jane Ashton-Hibbert, whose 81-year-old grandmother Hilda Hibbert was given a lethal morphine injection by serial killer Harold Shipman in 1996, and Malcolm Sentence, whose girlfriend Jane Longhurst was murdered last year.

Mrs Fergus said: "The paltry amount of money spent on victims clearly demonstrates how they are shamefully neglected by the criminal justice system."

Forgotten

Mrs Payne, who is also a patron of the trust, said she hoped at least one million people will phone the petition line.

"If we don't take action now, victims of crime will continue to be forgotten," said director of the Victims of Crime Trust, Pc Norman Brennan.

"Victims of crime have been failed for too long by a criminal justice system that is in crisis and spiralling out of control.

"The average life sentence for a convicted murderer is now under 13 years.

"The families begin their own life sentences the day the crime is committed. They are never the same again.

"Every anniversary, every birthday and every Christmas is a painful reminder."

The charity is also planning to send a representative from each the 641 Parliamentary constituencies to Downing Street later this year to lobby Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Mr Brennan said the figure of '18.66 was based on the annual government grant to the charity Victim Support divided by their number of clients.

:: The campaign's petition line on 0906 780 0999 costs '1 to call, with profits going to the Victims of Crime Trust's fund to provide counselling to victims.

:: Mr Brennan was going to Buckingham Palace this morning before the event to hand in a letter to The Queen deploring the current state of the criminal justice system. "It is clear that the Government have lost their way on law and order," he writes.

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