Sympathy for the Devil?

I know this will probably count as "sympathy for the devil" and it's very easy to put the boot into Karen Matthews now she's on the floor, but I think the question we should be asking right now is how, in Great Britain, yes, that's GREAT Britain, in the 21st century, we allow such places as Dewsbury Moor and such societies/communities to exist?

I go every day to South Yorkshire and I see similar places. Places where unemployment has been the main industry since the pits closed. I can quite easily understand how - to someone like Karen Matthews and Mike Donovan, someone with limited skills and no abilities, someone who has never known anything but the crushing boredom of the benefits culture, it might seem a plausible wheeze to do what they did, and to people like them, £50,000 reward money is the equivalent of a lottery win - enough to get themselves and the kids away from Dewsbury Moor forever.

Just because I understand it, doesn't mean I condone it. I can understand why Margaret Thatcher felt the need to wage class war instead of being Prime Minister for the whole of our country, it doesn't mean I agree with her. What Matthews and Donovan did to that girl was terrible, shameful, and they must be punished, and what happened to Shannon will scar her for life, but what a desperate hole-in-the-wall existence, what a corner must they have been driven to, to even consider this as a "way out". And how bad must Dewsbury Moor be, if this is a "way out".

So now Karen Matthews will serve many years in prison, her food will be spat in, Michael Donovan will never be the partner she wanted him to be, he will spend many years in prison, watching his back, as a "nonce", and the family is broken up for ever, those poor kids.
All these people have souls and all these people are now suffering in their own way. There are no winners here.But while we're all putting the boot in to Karen Matthews, Mike Donovan, and the social workers, no doubt, eventually, if Jeremy Vine has anything to do with it, we need to also ask

WHAT IS WRONG WITH OUR SOCIETY??????????????

AND HOW MUCH LONGER, seventy two years after J.B.Priestley first described this sort of society in his English Journey ARE WE GOING TO HAVE RUSTY LANE,WEST BROMWICH???????????