Alan claim that jails are just places where “minorities are oppressed” marks him indelibly as another left wing Shiite who will always go into bat for foreign minorities against his own people interests.

His claims that crime in NSW is “stable” is complete BS. In 1971, Det. Sergeant Phil Arantz was cashiered from the NSW Police after he informed the press that the Police statistics on crime were being systematically and deliberately underreported. In 2002, Det Sergeant Tim Priest also contacted the media to explain how dodgy the entire Police Crime statistics were. He pointed out that according to Police statistics, leafy, upper class; Neutral Bay had a higher crime rate than Cabramatta, the heroin capitol of Australia.

However, Alan is right about jails being full of minorities.

Naturally, Alan desperately seizes upon the orthodox, politically correct reason for this phenomenon. It is all because of those ghastly white rednecks who are oppressing their darker skinned brothers and sisters. Yeah, sure Alan.

Of course, there is another racist argument which Alan will never, ever consider. And that is that some ethnicities are very noticeably crime prone and welfare dependent, whereas as others are very noticeably productive and law abiding. This can be verified by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, who “Prisoners in Australia” publication which lists prisoners by “country of birth.”

Common sense would therefore conclude that those ethnicities who are law abiding and productive make much better immigrants than those from crime prone ethnicities. But such a perfectly logical conclusion is “RACISM”, and for Alan to consider such an idea would be an unthinkable thoughtcrime. Better to keep blaming the white guys for everything, rather than focus upon an unpleasant truth which will makle it self evident that Alan's orthodox humanitarian and utopian dogma has been found wanting.

POLICY on the run Alan as usual! No real thought or intelligence. Good article! Maybe you should run for Parliament HUH? No you would not last too smart mate they may not understand you!

Everyone agrees that we have too many people in jail, and that it costs the community a fortune. What we need is an innovative approach to sentence remission, which is in the full New South Wales cultural tradition. A very efficient, cost free system of solving this is as follows:

1. A gallows would be erected in every prison, and any inmate would be entitled at any time to voluntarily take up his position on the trap, and to put the noose around his neck.

2. He would then be entitled to pull the lever of a poker machine in easy reach of the trap, as many times as he wishes. Each time he pulled the lever he would receive two months remission of his sentence, however long that may be. When he has pulled he lever enough times for the accumulated remissions to equal the remainder of his sentence, he would be free to go.

3. Occasionally, however, pulling the lever would actuate the trap. All we would be dealing with then would be another death in custody.

Alan, you wrote;

<< …it was depressing to hear NSW Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell on March 20th promise a more severe policing regime than his opponents in next Saturday's election. >>

and;

<< The tactic is electorally effective, if socially destructive. >>

I don’t get it – what is socially destructive about having a more rigorous policing regime?

More police and a better standard of policing would work towards REDUCING the number of people in jail, wouldn’t it? It would work towards crime-prevention if would-be criminals thought that there was a significantly higher chance of getting caught.

So what if there is no real call for improved law and order in NSW and if that state compares favourably with the rest of the country? There is always room for improvement, and it is the job of politicians to make it happen, yes?

Alan, you haven’t said in your article what you think O’Farrell should do; only what you think he shouldn’t do!

How would you improve law and order without building a more effective policing regime… and punishment / correctional regime?

You mentioned Michel de Montaigne, but again you didn’t say what approach he would take towards a <<more humane regime>>