Coroners and Justice Bill

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that important point. Sometimes, we in politics misunderstand what the public tell us about crime. We often think that they are telling us to be tougher and harder for the sake of it, but I do not believe that they are. When the public demand tougher sentencing, they want it to produce the result that the right hon. Gentleman outlined: to reduce reoffending. We must ask ourselves whether tougher sentences would achieve that. If the evidence shows that they would not, our duty is to ensure the imposition of sentences that do. We are perfectly capable of making those decisions, but bound to take into account what the public want from sentencing. As the right hon. Gentleman said, they want to reduce the risk of becoming a victim of crime in future. That is the point of amendments 20 and 21. We know more about what works and what does not in sentencing than might be supposed from reading the newspapers. Sentencers should therefore be encouraged to use the knowledge that has been accumulated and is accumulating about what works. The best way of achieving that is not through individual sentencers learning more about the evidence, but through the guidelines. For example, we know that short prison sentences do not work in reducing reoffending. On the other hand, restorative justice works—it is approximately a quarter more effective than other sentences. We know that from randomised controlled trials—the best evidence that one can collect. We know that short, sharp shocks and scaring-people-straight programmes—taking youngsters to jail and saying, "Look, here's a prisoner, this will happen to you"—do not work. Indeed, in the "Scared Straight!" case, such a programme made things worse. The evidence shows that they increase crime.