CLOSE on the heels of Jack Straw's new Crime Reduction Strategy which, when unveiled two weeks ago, challenged the "Prison Works" policy inherited from the Tories, the government now employs spin tactics to convince the public that non-custodial measures for offenders are tough.

Today it was announcing proposals to rename and reorganise the 90-year-old Probation Service.

Names such as Offender Risk and Control Service, the Public Protection Service and the Community Protection and Justice Service are among the alternatives considered. The names of community service orders are also likely to be changed.

Obviously, in seeking to underline the element of punishment in the non-custodial approach to which it has tilted, the government is aware of the general public belief that community service and probation are soft options. Whether this can be done with the relabelling of the Probation Service or community sentences is open to debate - and doubt. For, the ink on Mr Straw's new strategy had only just dried when the Police Superintendents' Association insisted that prison works and asked him to drop plans for more community orders.

Maintaining that criminals did not see community sentences as a punishment, the police chiefs linked the recent fall in crime to the rising numbers in jail.

And if the public regard community sentences with as much scepticism as the offenders' apparent disdain for them, it will take somewhat more than name-change window dressing for them to be convinced that the response to crime is as tough as Mr Straw pledged in opposition.

The public's measure of the effectiveness of government policy on crime is by how much it goes up or down. And observing the downward dip produced by "Prison Works" and the police backing for it, they will take considerable persuading that the alternatives, no matter how they are named, are as effective.

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