THE PRISON INDUSTRY EXPANSION IN U.S. IS NO MODEL FOR
CANADA

Re: Harper government's anticrime package unnecessary, Column, May 30

What a thoughtful article by Ian Mulgrew!

The U.S. has five per cent of the world's population, but 25 per cent
of the world's prisoners (the highest incarceration rate in the
world). One per cent of its population is in jail, including eight per
cent of young blacks.

More Californians are in jail than in higher education.

The incarceration rate quadrupled since 1970s. If prisons worked, the
U.S. would be the safest place in the world - much safer than Canada.

A quarter of U.S. prisons have been privatized and I wonder how much
pressure the private prison lobby exerts on our government to expand
prisons here, as logic and expert advice from criminologists is
ignored. They make clear the futility and huge expense of expanding
prisons caused by mandatory sentencing.

As an addictions physician it intrigues me that up to half my
ex-prisoner patients only started I.V. drugs in prison.

Rodney Glynn-Morris

Vancouver