For most of human history, there were no prisons in the current US sense. The late Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, the great Catholic “Old Liberal,” first opened my eyes to the infinite tyranny of these Houses of Correction. It was one thing, he thought, to punish a crime against person or property, quite another to seek to displace God with repentence and firm purpose of amendment to the state. It is surely no coincidence, as the US becomes ever more despotic, that it builds ever more prisons, most of them on the fascist public-private model. Historian Martin Van Creveld shows that public executions were not ended in Europe for “humanitarian” reasons (as if!), but because the people assumed that anyone being ceremonially killed by the government was a good guy. But in the US today, most people seemed to freak out, right along with cable TV, at Scotland’s freeing of a dying prisoner. Even if he  blew up that jetliner–a horrific crime–what is to be served by keeping him in jail? Many Libyans and others think he was a patsy at worst, and therefore cheered his freeing. If they thought he was guilty, they were wrong to cheer, as Cuban-Americans were wrong to cheer the man who blew up a Cuban airliner, as Americans were wrong to cheer the men who dropped firebombs and atombombs from a great height on unresisting cities. But is prison the answer for elderly or terminally ill bombers? For anyone? Why isn’t restitution, on the old Germanic pattern, a possibility, rather than taxing the victims to pay off the prison keepers? Thanks to Gary North for drawing my attention to a “great book” on prisons.