In this inaugural Longford Lecture Cherie Blair QC asks how we should deal with those who do not share our values or who break our moral codes?  Are human rights about individual freedoms and formal justice, or about dignity, respect and substantive equality?  What are our responsibilities to those in need, to victims and to those who have suffered injustice?

She concludes that meeting the needs of victims and the vulnerable means looking well beyond the courtroom and the statute books.  It means tackling the causes of victimisation and vulnerability and building community-wide solutions.

She says that this means dealing with crime prevention and stopping people being revictimised and it means facing up to the vulnerabilities that lead people to commit crime. 

She also tells us that it is inescapable that the only way we can stop people being revictimised – the only way we can prevent others from becoming victims in the future – is to find more effective ways of tackling the causes of crime.