When I was a boy, one of the stories that most inspired me was that of a preacher named David Wilkerson, who saw a photograph on the front cover of a magazine of a group of teenage gang members in New York, and reacted by going there to see if he could try to bring about positive change in their lives. 

One of the gang members Wilkerson met there was a notorious young man named Nicky Cruz, who eventually became a Christian and ended up handing in all his weapons to the NYPD.

Wilkerson went on to found an organisation called Teen Challenge, which continues to support drug addicts around the world in the hope that individual lives might be changed for the better and, as a result, communities and even whole societies may potentially be impacted by the positive change.

After leaving school, I volunteered for four months with a branch of Teen Challenge in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and saw firsthand the positive impact that Wilkerson has left to the world as his legacy. 

… people who’ve done bad things can be changed for the better

When I was at university, as part of a church group I volunteered at the weekly chapel meetings held at the local men’s prison in Nottingham, which I’m sure in part was inspired by my enduring belief that people who’ve done bad things can be changed for the better.

And this belief has continued to shape my perspective on life into adulthood.

When, for example, the Clapham attacker was identified as an Afghan migrant found to have once allegedly converted to Christianity, my first thought was not how this man had clearly “gamed” the system, but rather whether it was at all possible that he really had been changed for the better, only to later reoffend.

This perspective was met with short shrift by some, including the presenter on TalkTV who interviewed me after I wrote an article for The Critic, articulating some of these thoughts. The interviewer suggested I might be in “a minority of one” in that particular perspective.

I found a similarly hostile reaction last week when suggesting on X — a very dangerous place to post opinions — that my first thought upon seeing the photograph of the boy charged with the horrific attack in Southport, had been to look into his eyes and wonder what could have happened to him in his life to lead him to commit such an act  

Even now, it seems, I am inspired by Wilkerson’s example and the story I read all those years ago. 

And I still believe there is hope for positive change, even for those who have committed the most heinous crimes, and that even such individuals need — even if they don’t deserve it — someone who will intercede for them.

This is by no means to excuse what they’ve done, of course, but to try to begin to understand what led them there, and perhaps even, in time, to offer them a way back — not only to change their lives for their better, but the lives of others around them and, as a result, society as a whole.

A similar discussion took place recently following an interview with retired runner Paula Ratcliffe, in which she suggested that a convicted child rapist now representing his country (the Netherlands) at the Olympics, should be given a “second chance”. 

Ms Ratcliffe was widely condemned for her comments, and later apologised, essentially retracting what she said.

It reminded me of the reaction I got from some friends at university to my voluntary work at the prison, where some seemed not to be able to comprehend why anyone would want to help people who had done such bad things that they had now ended up in prison.

Of course it’s not difficult to understand such a perspective, but at the same time I am troubled by the increasing sense that our society is unwilling to make any room at all for redemption. 

Whether it’s in politics — within which it seems increasingly the case that a resignation must follow any blunder — or for sportspeople like the Dutch Olympian, it seems there is no longer any room in our society for lives to be turned around, and that’s something that saddens me.

I’d much rather live in a world populated by men like David Wilkerson, who believe in the potential for change — even in the lives of individuals who have sunk to the darkest of depths, as is undoubtedly the case in many of the cases mentioned above – rather than, say, the likes of Tommy Robinson and Andrew Tate, whose legacy seems only to be further dividing society.

I know which type of individual I am inspired by, and choose to remain so, even if it were to leave me in a minority of one.