From Jim Trimmer
Sir: Everybody but Peter J.M. Wayne seems to be agreed that we need more prison places to keep people who would otherwise do us harm out of circulation for longer. However, it is a massively expensive business. So why not do as the NHS does and outsource? There must be plenty of developing countries whose costs are a fraction of our own that would welcome the opportunity to earn some hard currency. This is not deportation but sub-contracting, and, unlike the Americans’ secret gulag, these establishments would be subject to agreed minimum standards and open to periodic inspection.
Foreign nationals and others without established family connections here could easily serve their sentences overseas. A Jamaican drug-dealer would surely think twice before risking another five years’ chokey in, say, Uzbekistan.
Jim Trimmer
Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey
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