There's no other way of describing it. I bet if anyone dug behind the figures they'd find that this is all about the cost of locking someone up in over-crowded prisons which are full of druggies. No wonder these morons are laughing at the law. It took 90 convictions before the guy in the second link was put behind bars. When are we going to stop worrying about someone's social background and start focussing on taking people off the streets for the straight-forward reason that they are a menace to the rest of us.
http://www.hartlepoolmail.co.uk/news/crime/criminals-are-avoiding-jail-1-6366440
http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/banned-hartlepool-driver-jailed-after-6497356
Don't you think this is a sign of the times whether you're talking about the Courts, the NHS or any of the other 'services'. Common sense and common justice seem to have gone out of the window in favour of the manipulation of artificial targets and spreadsheet predictions.