Clive Elliott, operations director, Victims of Crime Trust

This is long overdue. It is the first time that any government has acted to reverse the existing imbalance between perpetrators and victims.

At the moment the criminal justice system is heaped on the side of criminals, whose lawyers use loopholes on their behalf.

They will not have the same monopoly over the criminal justice system which they had previously

Clive Elliott

They use it time and time again to their advantage. It is a biased system and it is out of date.

Change

The criminals know the system off by heart and play it to their advantage using legal aid.

All the people I have spoken to who have been victims of crime have come up against the worst side of the system.

So it is time for change. We need a criminal justice system that provides justice for victims and not for criminals.

For instance, why shouldn't a jury know the previous convictions of a defendant instead of having the wool pulled over their eyes?

It does not help all the previous victims of the accused for a jury not to know a defendant's history.

Confidence

And it is surely right to end double jeopardy. In cases where DNA evidence emerges after a trial, it is wrong that such evidence is not considered at the moment.

So David Blunkett is right to be trying to redress a historical imbalance which favours criminals over victims.

It is an imbalance which goes back to the nineteenth century.

Nobody has ever tried to do this since then and drastic action is needed to help restore confidence among the public.

It will be welcomed by those who have been victims and who realise there is very little justice in this country.

It will also make criminals think twice. They will not have the same monopoly over the criminal justice system which they had previously.

John Wadham, director, Liberty

The Home Office is attacking the wrong problem. It seems to blame fair trial protections for crime rates.

But 43,000 people are acquitted by juries each year - primarily because they are innocent.

The government pretends it can tackle crime by shortcutting justice: cheaper, but no solution

John Wadham

Meanwhile, of the five million crimes recorded each year, 77% - 3.9 million - go undetected.

No-one is arrested: that's not about the courts, it's about investigation and police resources.

The government pretends it can tackle crime by shortcutting justice: cheaper, but no solution.

Politicians will look tough - but crime levels will go untouched, while British justice will be seriously damaged.

It talks of 'shifting the balance' towards victims not defendants - but if you lock up still more of the wrong people for years, you don't help the victim.

Slash

The defendant, the victim, and relatives all suffer; only the undetected guilty benefit.

Allowing evidence of previous convictions and hearsay evidence may get more convictions - but too many will be the wrongful convictions of innocent people.

Previous convictions don't prove you committed this offence, this time; introducing them will simply mean more people being jailed because they seem the type 'likely' to do that kind of thing.

Trying yet again to slash jury trials show a contempt both for trial by jury - the democratic, trusted core of our criminal justice system - and for Parliament, which has twice already rejected such schemes.

Just as people should not avoid jury service without very good reason, so juries should not be discarded by the government or courts at the least excuse.

Failure

We welcome plans to get more people doing jury service - and to take better care of victims and witnesses, and adopt a more flexible 'what works' approach to sentencing and rehabilitation.

Finally, the White Paper itself says: "Prisoners are 13 times as likely to have been a child in care, 14 times as likely to be unemployed and 10 times as likely to have been a regular truant. At least 43% of sentenced prisoners have three or more types of mental illness".

'Tough on crime' - jailing record numbers of people and eroding protections for fair trials - has failed.

But the argument for tackling the causes of crime couldn't be clearer.