Letter: Perhaps we should rethink focus on incarceration

Editor:

You published an interesting article about plans for building a new Berks County Prison that will be sensitive to new attitudes about incarceration and prison reforms (“Prison project firm hired,” Reading Eagle, Jan. 21).

Prison abolition advocate Ruth Wilson Gilmore pointed out that people who have murder convictions in Spain are given seven-year sentences in which to think about what they have done, and what they will do after release. Gilmore said, “What this policy tells me; where life is precious, life is precious.”

Radical, perhaps, but certainly a more humanitarian and not incidentally less costly view on our criminal justice system. It’s something for all of us to think about: less emphasis on punishment, more on rehabilitation.

Nancy J. Knoblauch
Exeter Township

Source: Berkshire mont