Public Perceptions On Sentencing Are Often Wrong.

There is a certain element in our society which opines that 'too many people are locked up by the courts - and this is utterly avoidable'.
Well, clearly these attitudes originate with the hand-wringing, dripping wet left - but why they believe these things is a complete mystery to me.
As a JP and Chairman of Magistrates, I sat in some 500 courts in my time on the Sheffield Bench.
I doubt that I was involved in jailing many more than two dozen people over a ten year period - it was not for the want of trying! 
Over that period, I saw literally hundreds of professional criminals and unrepentant recidivists, with criminal records which would have made you blush, escape custody because of a system skewed entirely in their favour.
The record went to a young man with 17 pages full of both minor and serious offences, all printed out on A4 in size 12 font. He was NOT jailed - he never had been! Our 'guidelines' had prevented it! 
He was one of many who had blithely taken the well-trodden, non-custodial path and failed probation, disastrous Community Punishment Orders et al. Prison was the only alternative - and yet, so very often - we were prevented from imposing it.
I could write a lengthy book on this topic if I only had the inclination.