Letter: Fall in prison population is something to celebrate
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Your support makes all the difference.YOUR front-page story does not mention the obvious correlation between declining prison population and the increase in crime displayed in your graphs.
As a serving police constable perhaps I could enlighten your readers. It is very simple. Continual pressure from many quarters to give offenders any form of punishment other than custody, that is, formal warnings, official cautions and suspended sentences, means that fewer go to prison. For 'one-off offences', this is fair and sensible. However, the recidivists see this as a licence to continue in crime and relish mocking a system that can't deal with them.
Custody may not reform people but it does interfere with their criminal activities.
Tom Merron
Scarborough, North Yorks
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