Criminal justice has become one of those highly politicised issues that arouse strong views and emotions and divide people to the extent that those who disagree seem to be on entirely different wavelengths. They either stop communicating or argue with mutual derision. There seem to be deep divisions about the way in which a modern democratic society should try to prevent crime, deal with it when it occurs, help its victims and respond to those who commit it. Opinion is polarised between those who focus on the direct consequences of crime, for the victim or for society, and argue for offenders to be punished or put where they can do no more harm; and those who focus on the offender as a human being and as a person who may be capable of change – and also on their families, including children, sometimes referred to as hidden victims of crime – and therefore argue for prevention and rehabilitation.

Both opinions are sincerely held and sometimes vehemently expressed, and both are likely to come from the same well-spring of basic decency and concern for a better society. The differences between them and the feelings they arouse can be exploited politically, and commercially by the media, so intensifying the emotions involved and making agreement harder to achieve. The lack of common ground leads to frustration and sometimes to moral indignation on both sides of these arguments.

An exacerbating factor is that the generic category ‘crime’ covers such a vast range of behaviours – from serial killer to class C drug-user; from white-collar fraudster to homeless shoplifter; from violent child abuser to vulnerable teenager drawn into a gang; and so forth.