I understand the appeal of the idea. But I do have a few reservations. If a guy is convicted of robbery is it really fair to send him to an island where he’ll get killed? Isn’t that just a death sentence, once removed? Also, is it remotely conceivable that environmentalists would allow us to send men to an uninhabited island and develop it agriculturally? I doubt it.

Anyway, I bring this up because of this email:

Jonah,
While I agree that ‘No Escape’ is a bad movie, what I thought was interesting was that the writers somehow thought placing the country’s hardest and most violent killers on an island surrounded by mines and guarded by helicopter gun ships was wrong. Of course they make the warden and the criminal justice system to be the bad guy however wouldn’t things be interesting in the community of criminals if they truly had to live in a society of their own design? Place them on a respectable island that can sustain some kind of agriculture with a boy scout handbook and let them fend for themselves. No worries about death penalty cases and the such.