I am always astonished, when a person is convicted of an awful offence, to see a succession of people appear before the court to say he or she comes from a good family. Somebody who comes from a good family is more deserving of punishment than somebody from a bad family. The idea that people will advise the judge not to send a person to jail because he or she comes from a good family is a contradictory one. People from such families have less reason to expect sympathy. Those who come from backgrounds that gave them no hope and no chance deserve to be given positive references. Society will have to examine the idea of diminished responsibility in cases where people, quite visibly, never had a chance and in cases where there is a medical consensus that the person involved suffers from insanity.