Crime and Punishment

From today's Evening Standard a story of police priorities in this brave new Britain. Dave Consalvi lost £1,500 when his debit card was cloned, a week later his credit card was stolen. Dave Consalvi went to a store where the debit card was used, went through the CCTV footage and found "great pictures of the two guys using my stolen credit card", he also found the debit card card cloners' car registration plate and went to the police with the information. "They didn't do anything". However the police did take action when they discovered that he had not updated the address on his car registration document when he moved and so had not paid a speeding file (8mph over the limit), they came to his house with an arrest warrant.

It appears that 51.7% of crimes in London are "screened out" by the police. That is of course an average and some crimes are being all but ignored by the police - 43.4% of burglaries are "screened out", 71.4% of criminal damage offences are "screened out" and 77% of theft/handling stolen goods are "screened out". I wonder what percentage of the cases that are not "screened out" result in a prosecution. I further wonder what percentage of the cases that are actually prosecuted eventually result in a conviction. Finally I wonder what percentage of convictions result in a prison sentence of long enough to be a punishment or a deterrent. Now what percentage of crimes do you think result in a prison sentence? Now do you wonder why crime is so high? The chances of a thief getting caught are slim, the chances of their case being proceeded with are less than 25%, the chance of getting convicted slim and the chance of actually being meaningfully punished even slimmer.