The Guardian's ICM poll was taken after the verdict refusing deportation of Learco Chindamo, and as news broke of the shooting of 11-year-old Rhys Jones. Crime and punishment had filled a thin August week, as ever leading the BBC news with scant statistical context.
Hand-wringing and finger-pointing between liberal and punitive commentators reached a crescendo just as this poll was taken. Everyone drew from this "summer of guns and knives" absolute proof of whatever it was they already thought about Britain. There you go, said the Tories, this "broken society" is in a state of "anarchy" and "chaos". Marriage is the answer! The Tory press called for zero tolerance for just about everything. Michael Portillo even managed to use it to blame the EU. Meanwhile, we liberal commentators point as usual to overwhelming evidence that crime and violence thrive most in the most unequal societies. If 30,000 left school this summer with no GCSEs and 1.2 million unemployable youths have gone missing altogether from education or work, what do you expect?
The ICM poll's first finding that most people think the courts are too soft is no surprise. People always think judges mad when verdicts are reported with no details of the case. Recent research finds people are clueless about the current tariff of punishments. But they advocate sentences that are precisely the same as the ones judges actually hand down.
The surprise in today's poll is that 51% no longer reckon prison is the answer: that should mark a milestone in Labour thinking. After the thundering years of Blair/Straw/Blunkett/Reid rhetoric of retribution driving through a firestorm of criminal justice bills, most people now think alternatives to prison are likely to work better. On Labour's watch the prison population doubled to 80,000, even though crime has fallen steeply, including violent crime. But now 49% think prison makes the bad worse and doesn't deter - even in a week like this. While nearly 80% of young prisoners are reconvicted, only 55% of people given community sentences reoffend. At last, it seems, the sheer waste of spending £42,000 a year on a non-violent prisoner, compared with £2,400 on a community sentence, has become public knowledge.
But Labour is rightly alarmed by the Tory lead on both crime and health, two top-of-the-poll issues. Losing support on health was one of Tony Blair's greatest domestic blunders: Alan Johnson has to win it back before any loose talk about an early election. But in New Labour mythology, it was crime "what won it" back in 1997, with that magic "tough on crime and tough on the causes" mantra. Back then, it put Labour 16% ahead on law and order but now they trail the Tories by 10%. How will Gordon Brown claw that back?
This will be a crucial test, for as yet we know next to nothing about his gut instincts on crime. Those who have flocked back to Labour will not want to hear more unconvincing Blair-type "eye-catching initiatives". So far Brown's solemn and measured response bodes well, talking mainly of the need to work intensively with families and intervene at the earliest stages. Punish those responsible, he said, and work with the police in key areas to challenge gun and gang culture. The tone was firm, but not inflammatory. Quite right, too. Jacqui Smith did not thunder either: she wisely planned more use of acceptable behaviour contracts (less drastic than Asbos) because they work well: the Audit Commission praised them, finding 65% don't reoffend. What today's ICM poll suggests is that what may please the front page of the Daily Mail no longer resonates with most voters. Most people do understand what works.
Or is David Cameron on to a winner with his "broken society" line of attack? It sounds preposterous. Do people really think we are living in a state of "anarchy"? Do lawless teenagers really symbolise the whole society? Everyday life in Acacia Avenue, on the high street, in the suburbs, the village green, even in most housing estates, is not anarchy. Rude youths hanging about the parade of shops on bikes, kids being rowdy on any public patch of ground they can find disturbs people, but it's hardly new.
Here are the don't-panic facts: gun and knife carrying is increasing and dangerous, but latest Home Office figures show 50 fatal shootings in 2006, compared with 66 in 1995. There were 243 fatal stabbings in 1995, but only 212 in 2006. Meanwhile more 16-year-olds are staying on in school than ever before and a lower proportion are committing crimes. Youth in all its changing horrible faces always horrified the elders, from apprentice boys to teds, mods and rockers to punks and goths. Read Geoffrey Pearson's brilliant Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears to be reminded of extremely violent gangs in the recent past - who mainly grew up to be parents scared witless by the next incomprehensible generation. In the 1890s they panicked about violent young gangs in "peaky-blinders" - a peaked cap that gang members wore - that petrified the populace, like hoodies now.
But liberals should be well warned that facts are not enough. Rationality, history and statistics are no match for particularly upsetting senseless crimes. Remember how Howard inflamed the Bulger case into "Prison works!". Politics is an art not a science because most of us spend as much time inside our imaginations as in the real world, wrapped in memory and imaginary futures, swayed by deep beliefs only tangentially touched by reason or numbers. Film and fiction's obsession with crime reflects the monumental role of transgression in our imaginings, exploring ourselves and society's outer limits, the infinite variety of human extremes and how to control them. So the leader wins who can capture that inner life of the nation's mind and mood, especially on law and order.
As Brown and Cameron circle around each other, not yet finding one another's measure, crime may decide the victor. Despite early hoodie hugging, Cameron has gone for the panic button - family life wrecked, feral children and violence an epidemic that needs more prisons built. Brown and Smith seem to be heading for "what works" - from Sure Start at birth to intensive youth programmes and training for those vanished from school registers. Panic will always be a winner with the 30% solid Tory vote. But today's poll suggests the rest are ready to be convinced otherwise. If Gordon Brown offers serious long-term plans to invest heavily in what really works to cut crime, he can carry the day.