SIR, —Mr. Geor g e Wheatley is wron g if he ima g ines that every
criminal is one by choice. He forgets the sexual offender, the criminal who is in any wa) mentally ill, and, more often than not, the recidivist.
He would do well to read Tony Parker's account
of the man who had been convicted eight times for thefts totalling iI78 and had spent twenty-six years of his life behind bars, with an average period of eleven weeks between sentences. Within a few hours of his release from seven years' preventive detention he was arrested for attempting to steal from some mailbags on King's Cross Station and sentenced to ten years' further imprisonment. At the time of this incident one of your readers wrote in these columns. it is obvious that seven years neither taught this man anything nor deterred him.' It is a sentiment with which even the Government's recent White Paper seems to agree. Our prisons are places where we hide our criminals; we do not really attempt to cure them or prepare them properly for the world they must face on release.
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