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

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 find it weird that people who claim to speak for the prisoners basically want to keep them in cages all the time - and then they'll fight for better prison libraries or whatever. It's like they're missing the big picture. If I were in prison, of course I would prefer to be outside doing physical labour. It's not physical labour but prison life that kills a person. It's so bad inside that the outside jobs are often sought after. So, yeah, call them work crews and let them do it. At the same time the retributive side can feel the cons are being punished.

I'm not fond of ideologies. I don't like it when people have answers before they know the question.

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.

I think there is a lot of crime caused by desperation, and it doesn't mean that people commit crime because they're poor, but certainly a lot of people who are poor commit crime and they might not if they weren't poor. You understand the difference there? That's not news, but it comes up when I hear people say poverty doesn't affect crime - that crime is still going down in America even though the economy is bad.

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?