View of man or woman in the street on sentencing are almost entirely irrelevant

Why do journalists run around after notorious court cases, like that of Mick Philpott, asking what people in the street think about the sentence? The individuals have not sat through the days, if not weeks of the trial. They have no idea of the detail, yet feel at liberty to pass down judgement on the sentence. Add in the fact that media outlets only usually report the opening prosecution case and the verdicts of such cases and the level of ignorance becomes even more apparent. The views expressed by the man or woman in the street in these instances are almost entirely irrelevant, having about as much validity as whether they like red or green. When the underlying narrative is that sentences are never long enough and that prison really does work if incarceration is eternal and the whole exercise becomes quite insidious.