Thoughtful BBC series of articles on "Criminal myths: Misconceptions about criminals and crime"

I just came across this series of special articles via BBC Future under the headine "Criminal Myths."  Here is how this introductory piece sets up what follows:

In both the UK and the US violent crime has recently been rising, records show. There are now also record numbers of individuals behind bars around the world, about 10.35 million, a figure that has increased by 20% in under two decades.  The highest number of these are in the United States, where those convicted are serving increasingly long sentences.

Among the prison population, 70,000 are women and girls, a figure that has been rising higher than for males.  A high proportion of women behind bars have mental health problems and have been victims of abuse.

Despite these rises, we are not living in the most violent era of history (in 1991 the violent crime figures in the US were about double those of today).  While in the UK, although police figures indicate that crime is rising, a national crime survey found that most crimes "either fell or were at a similar level".

Meanwhile in the Netherlands, prisons are closing due to a lack of inmates to fill cells, as our reporter discovered on a visit to a Dutch jail, though this does not necessarily mean that crime is dramatically falling. These examples show that statistics can be confusing, and there is often more going on than the numbers suggest, such as falling police officers, longer jail terms, to a rise in community sentencing.

That's why we are taking a look at some of these issues, to tackle the misconceptions about criminals and the factors that shape crime.

Here are the full headline of some of the articles in this series:

• "How prison changes people: Longer and harsher prison sentences can mean that prisoners’ personalities will be changed in ways that make their reintegration difficult, finds Christian Jarrett."
• "The myth behind long prison sentences: Does spending ‘100 years’ behind bars actually help deter crime? BBC Future explores the impact of long prison sentences, and looks at how Norway is taking an opposite approach."
• "Locked up and vulnerable: When prison makes things worse. Many incarcerated women are victims themselves -- of mental health problems, and of crimes worse than their own. Is prison the wrong place for them?"
• "The unique way the Dutch treat mentally ill prisoners: In the Netherlands, criminals with mental illness are treated completely differently from many other countries."