It's isn't necessary to convince every member of the public, in order to get change. Really, you only have to convince a few people in positions of power and they will make change happen. It's also about appealing to the specific interests of those in power, which often include financial considerations. The debate around prisons is a good example. The govt would really like to get offenders into work and paying tax, not have them sitting around in prison, which costs the taxpayer £50,000 per person per year.

When it comes to SO, it's really a numbers game. If there are only a few SO, then they can afford to lock them all up and take the hit financially. But what if there are tens of thousands of SO? Then it becomes more expensive. Also, what if those SO are mostly children? It looks bad for any govt, to be locking up thousands of children.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12944949/Children-committing-18-rapes-DAY-15-000-rapes-sex-attacks-year-shocking-report-finds-police-warn-sexual-violence-normalised-online-pornography.html

I kind of like this headline from the Mail. It's a great illustration of how to misuse statistics. They give the impression that every child in Britain is committing 18 rapes a day, when of course what they are really saying is the average figure for all children. But the reaction to it is interesting. Even the Mail readers don't want to lock up children, so how you present the argument matters too.

Another aspect of this issue is covered by the BBC here. As you say, many of these are low-hanging fruit, and in this case many of the suspects are unaware of the implications. Ignorance of the law is not a defence, but this sort of thing is the reason why Outcome 21 was introduced. Of course, Outcome 21 is an informal outcome, not a conviction, but it must still feature in official statistics. I doubt the NCA is involved in any of those cases, but I'm not going to make any excuses for them. They should make a point of knowing what they're talking about. I think it's unlikely that those two newspapers would distort or misquote what he said in the same way, but it does show the attitude of at least some people in law enforcement.

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

Whilst I completely agree with what you say, the majority of the public would not. I remember being on a "employing people with convictions" course a few years ago and the tutor had data on the screen and stated something like "people with a sexual offense are disproportionately less likely to reoffend than the majority of other offences". To which there was a chorus of "I don't believe that" and arguments. The guy put up the data and the rational, and the consensus from the group was that it simply couldn't be true and dismissed it. 

You talk about sexual offending. I wholly believe that if we gat to a place where it is openly accepted that sexual offending is 100% unacceptable, but it is understood that f people seek help early and without stigma (almost like drugs/ gambling etc) the number of people being prosecuted would drop massively and ultimately everyone would be safer. But again this doesn't fit the narrative the majority believe. 

There was outrage when it was discovered that the NSPCC provided funding to the Lucy Faithfull foundation (a charity that works with adults to stop them offending against children. This speaks volumes in my opinion. Prevention is better that dealing with the outcome, but people simply don't want to accept this.

The problem is that people's perception doesn't match the truth. Government and political parties align themselves with what the public want and therefore we are where we are. I can't see it changing.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/25046790/not-enough-paedophiles-jailed-warns-national-crime-agency/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/13/eight-in-10-convicted-in-uk-over-child-abuse-images-avoid-prison-nca-says

Considering that the countries prisons are full up, this was a surprising comment from Graham Biggar of the NCA. The College of Policing even says that custodial sentences increase re offending rates, because they expose people to criminal influences in prison and remove them from protective factors on the outside.

But when you read into the story, its clear that he doesn't get what is actually going on. He's conflating the worst offenders on the dark web with the low hanging fruit, who make up most of the people arrested. A report by the Guardian showed that 50% of them are in fact children. Does he want those kids locked up too?

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/dec/04/thousands-young-people-caught-watching-online-child-abuse-images-scary-figures-show-england-wales

At the most extreme end of the spectrum, are the people running these dark net websites, and when they do get caught, they usually receive very long prison sentences. But the vast majority of offenders are not running websites, they are clicking on links to what they think is legal porn and getting referred to the police by social media firms. Something like 80% of all the referrals come from the NCMEC in the USA, which then passes them on to other countries

Most of the people being arrested are porn addicts, not pedophiles and they need treatment for their addiction not prison. The House of Lords recently produced a report recommending better use of Community sentences and in particular mental health treatment and addiction services. But they missed a trick. They only considered drug and alcohol addiction, not porn addiction. This is a health and addiction issue, not a crime issue, so it should be dealt with by the NHS, but unfortunately they don't recognise porn or sex addiction, as a real addiction.

Until that changes, we are going to see more ignorant comments from people like Graham Biggar, sadly.