Black and white; (letter-writer) Dan Garrett apparently sees everything in these two colours.
Fortunately, we live in a country that understands that people and life in general runs from white to black through a whole range of grays.
Because of this we can print diatribes like “porridge with some milk” and “put the “good” ones on work gangs” as part of our freedom of speech while also printing Mark Rushton’s article.
I do not disagree with Mr. Garrett that these “convicted criminals” need to pay their debt to society for whatever crime society found them guilty of, but to paint every person in a corrections facility in our province with the same black brush is plain wrong.
These people run the whole gamut of humanity and the reasons they are in prison are as varied as the reasons we are not.
A few will never be able to function outside those walls, but for many the programs they take and people they meet while serving their sentences are the first chances they have to change their past and move towards a future that will help society rather than harm it.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not for paying the inmates more money, however I do believe that turning the clock back to an era of gulags and forced labour camps is not the way to go.
Brenda Borba