May 2, 2011Dear Sir,Jamaican legal expert Frank Phipps QC stated recently: “Imprisonment, especially in Jamaica’s penal facilities, is sometimes worse than death.”It costs approximately $10,000 to house a prisoner annually in Jamaica $80,000 in Bermuda.The Bermuda Government has already started investigations into shipping our prisoners overseas. Jamaica seems like a good choice for convicted gang members. Pay the Jamaican government (say) $35,000 per prisoner/per year we save 43 percent and the Jamaicans make a profit of $25,000.Mr. Editor, if these gangs[ters] are going to use our Island as a personal battlefield, then they have given up many of their civil rights as a human beings as far as I am concerned and should be treated accordingly. I am a proponent of the death penalty and have no problem in seeing these people sentenced to death. I am also aware that in times of social stress such as the present climate, shouting for capital punishment is a “knee-jerk” reaction and full of nasty pitfalls, especially if we are trying to rediscover ourselves as a tourist destination, an unlikely occurance in the midst of a murder spree.I understand (information gathered from a local TV programme), there are only 50 central individuals who are the gang master-minds; dispose of these people and the monster has lost its head. And if they’re lounging in a Kingston gaol at Her Majesty’s Pleasure there might be a reluctancy for others to take their place at the head of the gangs if they too might suffer a similar fatePossession of a gun mandatory life sentence in a Jamaica prison. Bet you’d only have to do it a couple of times and the problem could be over … maybe not as simplistic as that but a step in the right direction.Sometimes we have to get really scary to scare the scary guys.WONDERING AND WANDERINGSouthampton