to be able to run it properly? Surely by now someone could have figured out how to operate this purpose built facility.

Right now there appear to be serious disagreements among prison staff and inside complaints about how the prisons are run. As long as that continues it will be difficult to get constructive projects in place.

The West End Correctional Facility was built for several very good reasons.

The first was the poor conditions at the old Casemates Prison which did not provide facilities for rehabilitation. There were a great many people who felt that conditions at Casemates were unreasonable and unhealthy. The crowding and the state of the building were not acceptable for Bermudians.

Secondly, there was a good deal of feeling that rehabilitation was the only way to the future. Judges went on suggesting help for prisoners, especially sex offenders and addicts, who then received very little help once inside prison.

There seem to be two distinct schools of thought in Bermuda about how to treat prisoners. The "lock them up and throw away the key'' school runs to the idea that prison should be a long punishment with only enough care to keep the body and the soul together. Hanging would be the alternative. These are the people who see the prisons as "holiday camps''.

The second school believes that prisons should be operated to protect the general public from offenders while those offenders are rehabilitated.

This newspaper falls in the second category. We are and have for a long time been on record as opposed to hanging and to suggestions that Bermuda return to flogging and we believe that Bermuda must do its best to rehabilitate prisoners because if they are not rehabilitated they are most likely to be returned to the public to offend again. But more than that, prisoners who are brutalised physically or mentally in prison are likely to return to the public very angry and prone to more serious crimes than those for which they were locked away in the first place.

Therefore the only way to go, especially in the case of sex offenders and drug or alcohol addicts, is rehabilitation. Bermuda built a new prison to provide rehabilitation but we do not seem to be serious about providing meaningful rehabilitation.

It has been said that some prisoners are unwilling to take part. That may be but it may also be that it is easier to pass them by than to encourage them toward rehabilitation. Many people who are in need of help are in denial and are not automatically going to ask for help or accept help.

Perhaps out of deference to the "lock them up and throw away the key'' school, there seems to be a reluctance to fully commit to rehabilitation. If Bermuda does not, it will only continue its social problems with certainty.

Those who worry about such things, should also remember that it is much cheaper to rehabilitate someone and return them to society as a productive individual than to continue arresting them and locking them away time after time.