My Lords, I hope that the Government will pay attention to everything that has been said today. There seems to be a total confusion about the meaning of the word punishment and the adjective punitive. The meaning of these two words has separated over the years. Punitive suggests something quite alien from the notion of punishment, which is
what is handed down when someone has been convicted. We know that vengeance does not work and that punitive sentences are not necessary. The whole point of punishment is to prevent further offences. We know now that community sentencing does, relatively speaking, work in the way that short prison sentences do not.
I beg the Government to concentrate on what is intended by punishment and to go on the evidence that community sentencing, with good support from the probation services, can work and that this is the intention. The adjective punitive seems to me to be completely out of place in this discussion altogether. I believe that the Government must listen to what has been said today.