Punishment depends as much on politics as it does on crime: crime rates have been stable in recent years but there"s been a striking increase in the prison population, And because populism is coming so much to (1)_____ the political agendas, politicians are advocating sharp increases in penalties to take (2)_____ of public unease. The question is how far this will get. In the 21st century weak governments might try to win legitimacy by being especially (3)_____ on crime. That could mean high prison populations and draconian (4)_____ such as those adopted in the United States in recent years. Luckily, there remain significant differences between the UK and the USA: social divisions are less extreme and racial (5)_____ are not as high. (6)_____ there is a great deal of minor violent crime here, rates of murder—(7)_____ particularly fuel public anxieties—are much (8)_____ because guns have not been so widely (9)_____. It"s unlikely that this will change greatly: the (10)_____ to tighten up the gun laws in Britain will continue, and all (11)_____ the toughest criminals will still have a view about what is and what isn"t "acceptable violence". So I don"t believe we will see a huge (12)_____ in violent crime, but I (13)_____ rates of property crime and crimes of opportunity to remain high. There will also be much more electronic fraud because it"s so hard to (14)_____ and prevent. This is an important problem for business, but not one that (15)_____ much popular agitation. It"s unlikely we"ll see the return of the death penalty: the police are (16)_____ about its effectiveness and its reintroduction would be highly problematic (17)_____ the recent Council of Europe protocol outlawing its use. (18)_____ punishment remains a pretty accurate temperature gauge, though: (19)_____ there is significant political pressure for the death penalty, it"s a (20)_____ of harsher attitudes towards crime generally.