Tough on crime and its causes?

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling was given some disappointing statistics in a parliamentary answer to a question he put.

In the year to September 2008 in England and Wales 3,713 people were given custodial sentences for possession of a knife. but over half of these (- nearly 52 per cent) received a three month sentence, and only 15 % were given more than than six months.

Just one offender received the maximum sentence of four years.

This was less than 2 years after the the then Home Secretary, reiterated the "tough on crime" promise and doubled the maximum sentence to four years, talking tough, but not acting tough! This is NuLabour to perfection - cultivating image, even if reality is different. (When there is s shortage of prison places and many prisoners are being released well before time, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised.)

Perhaps in the NuLabour lexicon "talking tough" means tough talking.

Last year fatal stabbings reached an all-time high of 270.