Solicitors will always try to mitigate for their clients, and 'family man' is pretty standard code for 'can't think of anything else to say but he has relatives somewhere'. It means nothing.
I'd say the fact that prisons are full to bursting has more to do with the sentencing.
Short of murder/manslaughter and financial/tax related crimes, don't most people end up with community/suspended sentences these days?
Punching someone in a nightclub as a one off probably isn't the sort of thing best punished with prison anyway.
Why are you so angry about it?