Read EA's post. Blair is responsible for basically setting quotas to be met in such a way that the statistic becomes more important than the actual offense.

Much the same can be seen in the screwed-up NHS. For instance, hospitals are graded on how many patients survive operations. No mention however would be made about how many of these patients were in life threatening conditions; so, a hospital that treats a large amount of cancer or burns patients would get a lower rating than a hospital that sets more breaks in bones. Again, this is due to quotas influencing the quality of the service and becoming more important than the actual service. In the case of police, this means police pursuing easy targets in favour of actual criminals.