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Yay! Arbitrary number targets! That's the best kind of targets.
There's never been a highly acclaimed TV show explaining in detail why arbitrary targets within the justice system are detrimental, so there's no way the public could know or understand this. Let alone a politician of high office.
You think Lammy watches or even understands The Wire?
It's not that it's arbitrary, although it is. It's more an admission that we could do far more, but choose not to spend the resources necessary, or the political capital to tackle the police and community culture (both interact to produce this situation even when the cops have the power).
He probably chose it for motivational reasons. It's a nice round number and it sells well in print or on TV, and you can shorthand it easily for stakeholders who will largely be either hostile to the basic idea or suspicious of your motives.
He's a politician, he chose it for political reasons.
When the police chase targets, numbers get fudged. KPIs, crime statistics, performance targets, stakeholder demands, call it what you want, they will aim for that number regardless of the consequences. It's bad governance and results in things breaking.
Well, ok, what works better than targets? Gotta measure how you're going somehow.
Edit: btw, all those factors I mentioned are indeed political reasons.
Determining what your goal is in terms of outcome, not numbers or percentages.
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
The more any quantitive social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt social processes it is intended to monitor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell's_law
These things have been known about in sociology and political science for quite some time.
He said: “Growing up in Tottenham in the 1980s, my biggest fear was ending up in prison. That may sound irrational, but in truth it was the fate of so many young Black boys like me.
“You saw it happen slowly at first. People missed school, got into petty trouble, started hanging around with the wrong crowd. No one stepped in to pull them back. For us, going to jail didn’t feel shocking or distant. It felt almost inevitable.
I don't understand why he thought going to jail was something that would 'happen' to him. As if he can't just choose to not break laws.
Better than Lammy promising to cut children in jail awaiting trial by 25%.