Crime and Punishment

Here’s an interesting sentence about prison sentences:

Although crime has broadly fallen since the 1990s, imposing longer terms for serious offences means the incarcerated population has doubled, from around 40,000 to 85,000 (see chart).

What would happen if we removed the word “although” and added the word “because”?

Although Crime has broadly fallen since the 1990s, because imposing longer terms for serious offences means the incarcerated population has doubled, from around 40,000 to 85,000 (see chart).

The sentence is from an article in The Economist, which also included the following graph.  What if we removed the word “Not” from the title?:

I don’t have strong views either way—but it’s worth thinking about different possibilities.

File under “never reason from a change in the prison population.”