Well, it's important to remember the tabloids are always seeking to evoke feelings of outrage. Anecdotes about too-lenient senteces always make it to the headl

Well, it's important to remember the tabloids are always seeking to evoke feelings of outrage. Anecdotes about too-lenient senteces always make it to the headlines, but errors in the other direction don't. Without credible studies we can't know which kind of errors cause more harm. Prison population and budget is orders of magnitude smaller than elder care so the swap is just a values-related thought experiment about elder care. (Hopefully its inventor didn't mean to invoke "pampering criminals"). Of course it's an outrage that voters and politicians underbudget it so badly, but that's what you get with this austerity and anti-welfare mindset that's gripping Europe.