I've found the centre of Newport to be much worse than anywhere else in South Wales for the past 20 years or more, though it's eons since visiting Swansea and keep hearing it's just as bad. We've always had pockets of poverty and deprivation but this general malaise is accelerating and most visible by the number of drug addicts, pissheads, beggars and rough sleepers (who in reality are more hopeless addicts) operating in public spaces with increasing impunity because 22,000 coppers have been elbowed since 2010 and the British prison estate is permanently operating at just several hundred places below maximum capacity that's resulted in magistrates and judges grasping at any mitigating circumstance not to imprison those who should be locked up. Serial shoplifters, as an example, have to commit scores of offences before finally receiving a token month in clink.