CRIME is the issue that brings the main parties together in the referendum on a proposal to restrict the right to bail.
But crime is also shorthand for a series of deep rooted problems on which there is no such agreement, though political rhetoric may give the illusion of unanimity.
In fact, there's a wide and growing gap on the origins and prevention of crime, though it's less evident among politicians than between other leaders of opinion - bishops and broadcasters, militant campaigners against drugs and trade union organisers.
On one side there are those who see crime as a single, simple issue: how to catch and keep the criminals, with little thought for their rehabilitation and less for the conditions which helped to make them what they are.
On the other side stand those who believe that the real challenge is to change the conditions in which crime thrives and some criminals prosper.
But this approach is far from simple and, if taken seriously, would lead to change in many areas: health, welfare, education, investment, planning and environment, as well as the administration of justice.
It would mean more public spending and more State intervention, with few dramatic immediate results. But in the long run there would be savings and eventually a society we could all live in - and be proud of.
For decades, politicians have shied away from such a long term strategy. Indeed, they were happy to look on crime as an essentially neutral issue: Justice was administered by whoever happened to be in power. The opposition kept an eye on the patronage that went with it.
Now Fianna Fail has decided that crime will be a major, and may well be the main, issue in the next general election - for which the continuing debate on the Department of Justice is a convenient dress rehearsal.
THE party's claim to replace a Vine Gael led coalition that has proved vulnerable on law and order is reflected in its current poster and cinema campaigns.
"We'll make sure crime doesn't pay. And criminals do," warns one FF slogan. "We'll give crime hard time," claims another. Both call for a Yes vote on November 28th.
So, of course, do Fine Gael, Labour, Democratic Left and the Progressive Democrats, all pinned down by popular demands to do something - anything - about crime, eve" if what they do isn't going to make a huge difference.
But even FG's law and order warriors are beginning to sound restrained by comparison with the new enthusiasm of several of their old opponents of the rearguard.
Some in FF may have had second thoughts about the party's position on divorce when they saw how evenly the electorate was divided in last year's referendum.
Was it, they wonder, a lost opportunity to reclaim the conservative ground it held in the 1980s?
Restricting the right to bail is an issue on which neither FF nor the coalition parties can go wrong. Or so they believe, though the case for change is strongly challenged and Mrs Owen's announcements in high summer included more effective measures.
Bail has become, for the time being, synonymous with the fight against crime; the polls have shown what a potent an issue it is. Never mind the effect, feel the popular pulse.
But when the smoke clears and the populist clamour dies, we will be left with the irony that it took the Catholic bishops to go to the heart of the matter.
Bishop Eamon Walsh of Dublin, who qualified as a barrister and served as a prison chaplain, raised the issue speaking, as our religious affairs correspondent Andy Pollak noted, from a position to the left of Democratic Left.
And he was supported by Dr Christopher Jones of Elphin who said: "From my own experience of working in social services I've seen that most crime comes from the impoverished, overcrowded, under serviced concrete jungles.
"Young people there are born into a culture of crime, they are born losers, they haven't a chance from the beginning."
It's a view that might have informed some of the contributions to the electoral dress rehearsal in the Dail, but didn't.
There, Fianna Fail began by trying to cover the board, from Start to Home, in a single jump. It landed in jail.
Mrs Owen announced an inquiry, to be conducted, not by officials of her Department but by two highly respected outsiders. No holds barred.
They would have access to everything and everyone they cared to examine.
BUT Dermot Ahern had told Vincent Browne within hours of her first announcement that an inquiry wasn't really necessary. In the Dail, Bertie Ahern thought it was not only unnecessary, it was a joke.
"What this House needs to know," said the leader of the Opposition, addressing the Minister for Justice, "is not what civil servant did what. It needs to know how you are so incompetent on every issue before you.
So it was hardly surprising that John Bruton's announcement of two major developments - the establishment of an independent courts service and an independent prisons board - was only grudgingly acknowledged.
Neither is a new idea: the authors are Mrs Justice Susan Denham and Dr T. K. Whitaker; and it's a shame that it has taken so long for Dr Whitaker's recommendations in particular to find favour.
But, now that they have been accepted, the occasion is worth two cheers at least. This is what it got from the governor of Mountjoy, John Lonergan, the spokesman for tee senior civil servants, Sean O Riordain, and several barristers on Tuesday night.
The Opposition was unimpressed. While it might have used the opportunity to emphasise the need for yet other reforms, some of its spokesmen (and women) preferred to ramble on as before.
They talked about the culpability of Mr Bruton, Mrs Owen and Mr Gleeson, like the member of The First Wives' Club who advised: "Don't get even, get everything."
They returned again and again to 1994, as if the action replay would somehow show a different result and, instead of an own goal, the FF Labour partnership could miraculously be saved.
They kept hearing voices - "We came for a head" - but, astonishingly, pinned hope of rescue on Dick Spring. On Wednesday, Mary O'Rourke thought she detected a Labour move towards the lifeboats.
Mr Spring returned from Cairo and the lifeboats stayed where they were. He reminded audiences once more of the differences between 1994 and 1996.
Between a partnership sagging under the weight of mistrust and one in which ministers were prepared to admit mistakes and initiate independent inquiries.
As FF and some commentators endlessly circled a series of questions, each of which beginning "What if the rest of us settled down to wait for the results of the independent inquiry and the end of the London run of the Albert Reynolds show.