If a Left-leaning individual and a Right-leaning individual hear a story of someone who has committed a horrible crime, the Right says “We must punish that person and make them pay for their crime”. The Left says “My god, what must have happened to this person that would drive him to do such a thing.” The first position seeks to remove the immediate danger from society, thereby enhancing their feeling of security in that a known danger has been removed. The second seeks to know and understand the root cause of the issues that led to the crime in the hopes of addressing the problem on a much larger scale thereby mitigating a thousand other such future crimes.
Needless to say, I subscribe to the leftist ideology. While it may on its surface appear to be softer on crime and criminals, it encapsulates a much nobler mission than the Right’s in that it wants to try to heal the wounds that society has inflicted upon itself. It wants to deal with causes more than symptoms. And any physician will tell you it is a fools game to do otherwise.