HARPER'S PRISON PLAN HEADED IN BAD DIRECTION

It should be obvious to everyone now that what Stephen Harper has
planned is a U.S.-style, for-profit prison system. This policy has
been wildly successful in the U.S.: increased crime and violence, the
largest prison population in the history of mankind, huge debt, and a
handful of wealthy jailers getting even wealthier on the taxpayers'
dime. This is what Harper wants for Canada.

He has already changed the laws to make anything involving marijuana
a "serious" crime, making it harder for your kid to make bail or get
plea bargains. He is about to pass S-10, which will impose mandatory
jail time for growing one pot plant in a rented unit, and six months
jail for making pot brownies! That is aimed at your kid, obviously,
and not the Hell's Angels.

All evidence shows that this policy will increase crime, further
subsidize the 98% of gangsters who will never be caught, further
contaminate the products being sold to your kids, and sink us into
decades of debt, to be paid off by -- you guessed it -- your kids!

It will also saddle tens of thousands of Canadians -- mostly men,
mostly between the ages of 18 and 40, our future work force -- with
criminal records that will hinder their ability to travel and find
employment and secure housing. He will also use this inevitable
increase in crime as justification for future erosions of civil
rights and liberties, and future expansions of police powers and
budgets. All this at a time when crime is at a 33-year low. Harper
isn't trying to protect Canadians, he is trying to hobble us. He is
trying to get Canada into the U.S.-dominated Inmate-Manufacturing
Industry, using your kids as raw materials. Serves you right for electing him.

Russell Barth

Nepean, Ont.