There's an unexpected lesson I got from working with hardened criminal offenders when I was a probation officer, and that is compassion.

One thing nearly all criminal offenders have in common is significant abuse in childhood. Abuse doesn’t guarantee someone will be a criminal, of course, but it's very rare for a hard criminal offender to have had a good childhood, it's as simple as that.

And so, I'd have this killer, rapist, horrible harmful person in front of me who should be buried under the prison (I could pull the trigger myself they're just such a waste of space), and then I'd have this realization:

At one point in time they were a baby with all the possibilities in front of them, and then someone came into their life and took those possibilities away with abuse and neglect.

And that is true of everyone, everyone you ever meet.

No matter how horrible they are, at one point in time they had the option to be better and someone took it away against their will and without their consent.

You don’t need to forgive them or even understand their behaviour. Compassion means simply realising their choice to be a good person was taken away.

And for those of you who would argue that other abuse victims didn’t become criminals, I’d say that’s because they got lucky with some kind of genetic predisposition or a significant positive influence at some point in their life.

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