E-mail:
“Dear Mr. Lowry: Thank you for writing an article on the deplorable state of
domestic prisons…
“I must confess that the inattention to the brutality run amock
in the U.S. prison system
baffles me, since both conservatives and liberals would
presumably have a stake in comprehensive prison reform. Conservatives
are skeptical of government and bureacracy, and what else can be
more scary from this anti-statist position than a prison system
where prisoners are often raped and beaten and sometimes killed?
For their part, liberals have championed prison reform at least
since the early 1970s, though they have largely fallen silent on
the issue, perhaps because it was not a political winner. In
any case, as you say, incarceration itself is the punishment, not
the constant threat of physical and sexual abuse.
“Please keep the light on this important issue and maybe a
coalition of
conservative and liberal politicians will develop to address
this important issue.”