Why are the prisons full?
Yes, Prime Minister has many lessons for any observer of the political world. Every episode was instantly quotable but none more so than the time Sir Arnold, the grand wizard of the Civil Service, advised Sir Humphrey about Politicians' Logic. It goes like this: All dogs have four legs; my cat has four legs; therefore my cat is a dog. Politicians, Sir Humphrey translated, think: Something must be done about this problem; this is something; therefore we must do it.
Politicians' Logic is even more prevalent when analysing the causes of problems - such as explaining why our prisons are full. Much of the comment has been about the impact of tougher sentences, the rise in violent crime and tabloid campaigns to let the punishment fit the crime.
The Economist - whilst acknowledging all these factors - reminds us of one devastatingly simple reason that the Government ought to be crowing about:
"One reason the prisons are full is that there are more police officers—141,000, compared with 122,000 in 2000. They can now go after crimes that are hard to crack but attract long sentences, such as drug-trafficking."
That part of the cause is rather obvious when you think about it - and could be presented as a great success to be trumpeted loudly by Ministers. However, to be wholly logical the Government should also have anticipated such a rise, especially as their own departments predicted it quite accurately. Maybe then, Ministers would rather keep quiet and hope people's attention drifts elsewhere.
Re: Comments for 'Why are the prisons full?'
Simple, The country is turning into a bag of S**T. The political system is not working, due to BIG business corruption etc.
So is it really suprising that more people are turning to crime.
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Police officers filling jails?
However, the article provides no justification for its claim that the 15.5% rise in the police force over the last 6 years has anything to do with the filling up of the nation's prisons. While it is certainly true that the British police have become better at recording crime, with the Recorded Crime statistics getting closer to the BCS's estimate (due in part to increased recording of minor offences), there is little available evidence to suggest that the proportion of crimes committed that go to court has increased, and certainly nothing to suggest that 15.5% more of the baddies are getting caught (assuming that this is what the extra police were supposed to be doing.)
As for the suggestion that extra police are tackling more difficult crimes, such as drug-trafficking, the evidence cited (absolute number of prisoners on drug-related offences) is also weak. There may be a correlation between police and trafficer-prisoner numbers, but this does not imply causation. Changes in the number of prisoners in on drug charges could be due to an increase in the drug market (with conviction rates unchanged). Alternatively, as sentences tend to be longer for drug trafficking, the full effects of any change in the number convicted in any one year will take a long time (then length of the sentence) to filter through to prison numbers. It is also possible that the change in the number of drug-related offenders in prison could be due to any other unknown factor.
Increasing the size of the police force may well have been a "Politician's Logic" response to catching criminals (Levitt's study of the US shows that police numbers have very little impact on crime levels themselves, so catching more criminals would seem the only logical reason to increase the size of the force).
And of course, if there are robust data to support the idea that having more police has meant that more criminals get caught, then I would have expected the Economist to have included them!