Speaking of prisons...

...as I'm sure everyone does...
Here's a submission I made to the Victorian Sentencing Advisory Council last year. A warning: it's a little more serious than my usual rants. Not so much of the sarcasm...

Dear sir/madam
I wish to make a submission regarding the inquiry on Continued detention orders (which I read about in The Age this morning).
I support the suggestion that it may be possible for a judge to order that sex offenders remain imprisoned beyond their sentence if a judge is of the opinion they may re-offend.
I do not think that imprisonment is the right punishment for all sorts of crime - particularly some property offences and drug offences which do not physically harm others. However, sex offenders cause untold misery to innocent members of the public (whether children or adults), and, once such a person has been found to have a committed such a crime by a court of law, the public has the right to expect that that person will not be allowed out again unless it is absolutely certain that they will not re-offend (admittedly, I probably come to this view since I feel that life sentences for such crimes would not be unreasonable).
For the record, I am not in favour of such measures, or even lengthy imprisonment, for all crimes. I have heard it said that the Opposition wants the measure extended to murderers and arsonists. Although murder is a horrible crime, there are many different reasons why someone may kill someone else, and not all murderers prey on vulnerable members of society in the way that sex offenders do (except for, say, serial killers and perhaps contract killers). For example, if a wife kills her abusive husband, or even has a melt-down and kills her loving husband, once she has served her time as determined by a judge, I would think that was enough.
With respect to arson, again there can be different reasons for setting a fire, although I do think that firebugs who deliberately light bushfires should be locked away for life - in a country like Australia, that is simply insane, and tantamout to terrorism. But formulating rules that allow for such distinctions may be difficult.
Thanks for your time.
Yours faithfully

(Ranty McRant)

The Council got my submission.

And ignored it.