Terrific Stories In The Economist

The current issue of The Economist has several good stories of interest and more than justifies the exhorbitant subscription cost.

• Excessively harsh conditions seem to make criminals more likely to re-offend. Are private prisons the answer? LIFE, which in Alabama really means life, is better than it once was at the St Clair Correctional Facility, a maximum-security jail near Birmingham. In 1985 prisoners rioted over what they called barbaric conditions, taking 22 hostages, breaking the warden's jaw and beating his deputy so badly that he lost all memory of the assault. Six years ago, six dangerous inmates escaped under a faulty lethal electric fence. All six were recaptured, but angry Alabamians demanded that someone sort the jail out. That someone was Ralph Hooks, the new warden who took over just after the escape. He tightened up security, adding ten miles (16km) of razor wire and a fence that trips an alarm if climbed on or tampered with. But perhaps more importantly, he tried to make the jail a less horrible place to be locked up in. When he arrived, he found that a few officers were handcuffing and beating inmates to punish them. One was demanding protection money from an inmate's family. Mr Hooks sacked or suspended all the abusers he could catch, and one was prosecuted. Now, he reckons, the prisoners feel they are treated fairly, and are less likely to riot. If an inmate has a grievance, he can come and discuss it face to face with the warden. Inmates (see above) even teach each other to read. A slight man on the point of retirement, Mr Hooks mingles fearlessly with hundreds of muscular, tattooed prisoners, who address him with respect and an occasional smile. Under Mr Hooks, the jail is no longer barbaric. But it is still grim. For a start, it is over-crowded. Three sweaty thugs are often crammed into a 69-square-foot (six-square-metre) cell with little light and no air-conditioning. In the Alabama summer it is fearfully hot. “If we had air-conditioning, we'd maybe have fewer fights,” says Mr Hooks, but there is no chance, he reckons, that the Alabama legislature will give him the money. Schools, roads and the needs of law-abiding folk come first . . . .

• Drug Strategy Review: Prescription Renewal: No one can get rid of drugs but reducing the harm they do is cheap and simple. IT WAS the day the cabinet came out of the closet. When Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, admitted on July 19th that she had smoked cannabis in her student days, ministers rushed to get their own confessions out of the way. By the end of last week seven of her senior colleagues, including the chancellor and the drugs minister, had come into the open about their own youthful pot-smoking. By wonderful irony the prime minister, Gordon Brown, had a day earlier ordered a review of the drug's legal status. In 2004 cannabis was downgraded from a class B drug to class C on the official three-point scale of seriousness which supposedly reflects the harm that illegal drugs cause and determines the penalties attached to possessing or dealing in them. Now, as the government prepares to renew its ten-year drug strategy, Mr Brown has hinted that he favours upgrading cannabis again. It is only two years since the last review of cannabis classification, which left things alone despite reports that modern varieties were stronger than the sort that Miss Smith used to puff. And it is just a month since Mr Brown declared he had no wish to revisit the subject. A recent Tory report calling for cannabis to be upgraded, among other “tough” anti-drugs proposals, may explain his change of heart. Britain's main problem drug, in fact, is alcohol. Young Britons swig far more than their peers in any other rich country, according to UNICEF. Drink-related deaths nearly doubled between 1991 and 2004, to 8,221—many more than the 1,644 who died from drugs in 2005. But Britain is also the stoned man of Europe. Among teenagers, only the Swiss smoke more cannabis; British adults beat most others on heroin, cocaine and ecstasy. The government says drug-taking is falling (see chart), but most of this is down to a dip in cannabis. Cocaine, more dangerous, has flourished. This is despite a decade of real “toughness”. The number of jail years given for drugs offences increased by 22% between 1998 and 2005, thanks to longer sentences and more convictions. Officers seized nearly seven tonnes of cocaine in 2003, compared with less than one in 1996. It is hard to know how strongly would-be drug users are deterred by the law, but the decline in cannabis consumption since it was downgraded suggests not very. And despite the efforts of the coastguards, cocaine is cheaper now than it was a decade ago. The government will not say how much its drug-enforcement efforts cost, but an estimate from the UK Drugs Policy Commission, an independent board of brains, puts it at about £2 billion ($4.1 billion) a year. The £570m allocated for drug treatment last year is a fraction of this, but it is nearly a third more than three years ago (alcoholism charities now say they feel left out). The number being treated has more than doubled in the past decade; some 55% of those the Home Office identifies as “problem” users are enrolled, compared with 17% in America. Measuring results is more important than just “pushing people through the door and counting them”, says Danny Kushlick of Transform, a campaign group. But efforts to measure effectiveness are improving too. On July 25th NICE, the body that measures the cost-effectiveness of medical care, released guidelines on drug treatment, recommending innovations including vouchers for those who wean themselves off the stuff . . . .