I'm not a fan of the death penalty. At some level I think killing is wrong, but I don't have sympathy for most of the people sentenced - I'm not a passionate anti-death penalty person. In truth, given all the other problems of the justice system, the numbers are so small, I think there are bigger fish to fry. Ironically, in terms of mental health and care, death row is probably the best prison situation to be in. There's a little more public eye on that, to ensure at least minimal levels of official treatment are actually given to death row prisoners.

When I talk to people the usual progression is, "Flogging's cruel and barbaric," moving very quickly to, "Only 10 lashes for five years?" Then I do worry, actually. On the one hand, once you start quibbling about the number of lashes, I've won. But on the other hand, people who say flogging's not cruel enough... I mean, well, what have we become? God forbid I wake up a couple years from now and we have even longer sentences and we flog people. I mean, then I might jump out a window.

If you're willing to give convicts time served and let them walk, why do you want to give them a criminal record? I mean, either they should be in jail, or be free. But it's all because of some internal bureaucratic stat about getting a felony conviction for the prosecutor. Everyone's got their own little game to play, but that prosecutorial part of it is not well known.

The thing I wrote we ought to look to Canada for is the shorter sentences. I mean, the mess we're in here, is because of the drug war and this idea of adding another five years, another 10 years, you know, like it means nothing to the people involved. It certainly does nothing for crime prevention - what problem are we hoping to solve?

I'm not a fan of the death penalty. At some level I think killing is wrong, but I don't have sympathy for most of the people sentenced - I'm not a passionate anti-death penalty person. In truth, given all the other problems of the justice system, the numbers are so small, I think there are bigger fish to fry. Ironically, in terms of mental health and care, death row is probably the best prison situation to be in. There's a little more public eye on that, to ensure at least minimal levels of official treatment are actually given to death row prisoners.

I don't think we can reduce the prison population now, so many of these people are damaged goods once they've spent much time in prison. It would have to be over a generation. But certainly, yeah, white collar crime.

I say a few good things about Canada in the book, you know. Americans are weird, though. We refuse to look at other countries. Start with Canadians - I want to think you aren't that different, so why can't we do our incarceration policies more like Canada? If we still had a 1970 level of incarceration which was the same as Canada's then and now, I never would have written this.