Ebbie, one of the most disturbing aspects of the US prisons system is that it is so big - easily the biggest, pro-rata, in the developed world, and possibly the biggest anywhere. In effect it is a wall between the rich and the poor. (The proportion of a population in prison is closely related to the gap between rich and poor, and nowhere is the gap wider than in the US.)

It is a source of despair for me that since 1979, with only one or two blips against the trend, the UK has been desperately trying to catch up with the US, in terms of both the proportion of population in prison and in the rich-poor divide, seemingly oblivious to the fact that many other countries achieve and maintain stability much less wastefully. Thus between 1979 and 1999 the divide grew more rapidly in the UK than in any developed nation except New Zealand (according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation). And guess what? We're building more prisons....