Regarding the reader who suggested that sending prisoners to an island to fend for themselves was no bad thing, let us recall the movie, Escape From New York. That place seemed pretty cushy to me, and the thieves got on perfectly well with the murderers. I never quite understood, though, why the authorities couldn’t have dumped them all on Staten Island (or Rhode Island, for that matter). Manhattan, even at the height of the crime wave, contained much valuable real estate, after all.