Abstract:The degree of congruence among the public and between ‘police’ and ‘public’ in attitudes to law and order has been a matter of considerable debate in England and Wales. This article presents some previously unpublished survey data in the context of a general review of research on this topic, and goes on to discuss police and public views about crime causation as a reflection of ideological ‘domain assumptions’ about the nature of offending. It concludes that although there are broad similarities in perspective between police and public, this homogeneity begins to break down when the data are disaggregated at a local level. It also questions the revival of a purely reactive model of policing as an ‘ideal type’ for