Quite!
In normal times the complaint is not that the prisons are empty, the prisons are bursting at the seams to the extent that politicians are jumping through hoops to find imaginative schemes to let them go again.
Who puts all these people in prison in the first place?
Similarly the courts are inundated with cases why? Where do all these charges come from?
Wherever you look in the criminal justice system, probation service what have the problem is the same, inundation.
My son has been on the streets of London now since Monday, it's been hair raising at times. He has not seen hjs own bed in all this time catching sleep on office floors. If he, or any of the others wanted a break from it then the solution was in his own hands. If he made an arrest, he could be off the streets for two hours dealing with the paperwork.
Beware of that which you wish. The images are captured on CCTV and other media. Now the situation is stabilised. The images are still there, will not go away,and people are sufficiently angry to turn these characters in. Until this stage was arrived at, which eventually was inevitable then arresting people was secondary. Police officers were too valuable a resource to be consigned to the safety of police stations and the scorn of the likes of people who write anonymously on here.
The arrests will now come thick and fast. The question becomes one of whether the courts will deal with them properly and whether the prison service will cope with the influx.