Words are not enough when it comes to crime It is always tempting for a prime minister in trouble to reach for the comfort blanket of law-and-order policy. Sounding tough on crime is never going to annoy voters - unless, that is, they do not believe what they are being told. The difficulty David Cameron faced yesterday, as he delivered his first speech on crime since taking office, was that the path he set out has been trodden many times before. Tony Blair's mantra "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" became one of the defining sound bites of his Labour government. Mr Cameron's updated, Coalition version is "tough but intelligent." Yet words are just that; achieving the goals that successive prime ministers have identified as worthy of pursuit is another matter altogether. Mr Cameron wants prisons to do more to rehabilitate offenders; he believes the criminal justice system should listen to victims; and he is keen to encourage "no-nonsense" policing and cut back the red tape that hinders it. These have been the policy ambitions of previous governments - will Mr Cameron succeed where they failed? On the rehabilitation of offenders, the Coalition is trying something innovative. It has long been known that the best way of stopping serial criminals continuing to offend is to find them work - now private companies, charities and voluntary organisations will be recruited to this task and will be paid by results. If there are problems with this idea - by the time such groups get involved, the damage is already done, since many prisoners do not have the education or the social skills that employers are looking for - it is still worth pursuing. Mindful of the derision that attached to his so-called "hug a hoodie" phase, Mr Cameron yesterday tried to pick a familiar path between sounding too tough and excessively wishy-washy. It was not, he said, soft to help criminals to reform; and neither did he want to be portrayed as a "bang "em up" cheerleader. But politicians spend too much time worrying about what they sound like and not enough providing the framework within which the police, the courts and the prisons can operate effectively for the benefit of the law-abiding majority. Introducing a new element of local accountability to policing with next month's inaugural elections of police and crime commissioners is a properly radical idea, even if support from the top of government for the measure has been lamentably lukewarm. Nor does it help when someone like Lord Blair, the ex-Metropolitan Police commissioner, urges people not to vote - though his defenestration by Boris Johnson at least shows that accountability does have its merits.