I would prefer to get lashed rather than go to prison.

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.

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.

These 2.3 million prisoners, somehow we've convinced ourselves that's normal and rational, more prisoners than soldiers, more prisoners than China, more than one per cent of the adult population, seven times the incarceration rate of Canada or any Western European country.

There's no straight line between closing the mental institutions and filling the prisons but there is some sort of relationship. And it's hard to tell how much mental illness among prisoners came in with them and how much is because of prison. I just imagine the real tragedy is there's probably a huge number of people who went in a little bit f - ked up and left completely insane because it's just a horrible treatment.

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.

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.