http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014 ... missioners

He's just the tip of the iceberg, and I've no doubt someone has a word in his ear about prison numbers every so often

Absolutely. We need more prison capacity. We have plenty of violent offenders being let off or let out early. Non violent offenders often don't go to prison despite repeated offences.

Prisons are expensive to build and very expensive to run. If we find money for that, what misses out? Also, experience in the US suggests prisoners accumulate to fill the space available, so no matter how many prisons you build its never enough. Prevention is much better than incarceration.

That's part of the reason I've always argued for clearer sentencing tariffs; you need only give the worst crimes and offenders severe punishment and imprisonment, it increases public confidence in the system lost to pricks like this, and will hope with the numbers crisis. Helps the better police forces too.

Human rights laws prevent punishments that could be an effective deterrent to crime while keeping prison populations down.
For example Singapore has much lower levels of low level crime as yobs are fearful of getting a fast flogging. Our yobs will just get an ASBO.
For an example look up Michael P Fay. It shows the differences between western and eastern attitudes to punishments and deterrents.