and staffing to rehabilitate prisoners, you have only a lock-up. For many years now Bermudians have known that judges repeatedly recommended rehabilitation, treatment and psychiatric care for people they sent to prison, when we all knew there was virtually no such thing.

It is perfectly clear that if you lock people away in prison, especially young people, without rehabilitation, they come out worse than they went in, angry and almost bound to offend again.

Far too many Bermudians appear willing to "lock them up and throw the key away'' and far too many Bermudians see prison only as incarceration and punishment. Prison without rehabilitation simply returns to the community people who have undergone criminal training in prison.

For a long time now this newspaper has questioned why Bermuda built a multi-million dollar prison which it could not run and why it did not provide in Westgate the rehabilitation it had promised.

Now, finally, there are indications that some real things are happening.

First of all, we are looking again to Canada for an expert to sort out the mess we have made of the prisons. There have been nothing but complaints ever since Westgate opened and, clearly, the new prison was occupied before there was sufficient preparation. According to the Canadian report into the prisons, the transition from Casemates to Westgate was badly planned and executed.

Clearly we needed someone to teach us how to run Westgate before it was occupied. However it is often difficult for Government to look for outside help. While it is perfectly clear that Bermuda cannot now and probably never will be able to provide all the expertise it needs, going overseas for help starts the Opposition politicians howling. They do not have to get the job done because they have no responsibility. Because of the criticism of using non-Bermudians, Government is pressured to try to get a job done without outside help. Then, if the job is not a success when done locally, the Opposition starts howling, "Failure, failure''.

That scenario is bad for Bermuda. It costs too much time and too much money.

Hopefully now we will get the workings of the prisons sorted out. We can all hope that the consultant from Canada will turn out to be another highly successful Colin Coxall.

Secondly, it seems that some real rehabilitation of inmates is going on inside the prisons. That is the only way Bermuda is ever going to cut down on repeat offenders. The prisons programme is in its early stages but, finally, we seem to be putting in place a comprehensive package, properly staffed and designed to help Bermudians.