Prisoners deserve a second chance

17/01/2007

Your reader Evan Jones (Letters MT, January 2007) may have come from a broken home and remained law-abiding despite it, but times have change since the 1940s, and many now in prison need rehabilitation rather than punishment, their conduct having arisen from perhaps anger, rather than criminality as such.

 

They deserve, and society deserves from them, a re-start and a re-start with a clean slate. Too many are regarded once released as still guilty and to be avoided and rejected. No wonder they often re-offend. Contrary to Evan Jones' assertions, loss of liberty is indeed punishment, as is being thrust into uncongenial company and treatment.

 

Jeremy Goodwin, Cumbria