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That’s really not how it works. If there’s little prospect of prosecution they simply aren’t going to bother with the time expense and resources to arrest.
Perhaps under normal circumstances, but arrest alone is enough of a deterrent for a lot of people. Plus some cops will arrest people just because the people pissed them off. They know no criminal charges will come of it, but they also know it'll inconvenience the person for at least 4 hours and ruin their day.
What time and expense? The cops and the jail staff are there regardless of arresting people or not. It costs them nothing additional to arrest you. The expense is part of their regular operational budget.
Which is limited
What I'm saying is that it doesn't cost them any more money to go out and arrest a bunch of people, than it does to sit at a donut shop stuffing their faces. They get paid either way, as do the people running the jails. Their budget isn't affected by what they do during the course of a shift.
They have a certain amount of money that they have to spent on operational work. The police and crime commissioners/mayor depending on region absolutely look at arrests v conviction rates and will give the Chief Constable a hard time if they are arresting people without hope of conviction, telling them instead to focus on priorities. It wouldn't surprise me at all if we don't see the criteria for arrest to be tweaked a bit.