
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 27, 1995                   TAG: 9508290001
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: G-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE PRISON GAME

"We need a more effective system to deal with criminals. As I see it, these criminals owe society a debt. And politicians are making it so these criminals are putting society in debt."

- Bill McDonald, Blacksburg

"If you don't have education, to teach what is right or wrong, to where a child has hope for the future of bettering himself, then you look at a life of crime. But if you take a budget and build more prisons and you're cutting education, what are you telling the people? What are you telling the people?"

- David Simmons, Roanoke County

"We need to put children first. And this stand-by business, building prisons, I think is ludicrous. Why in the world do we build more prisons to put children in when we can't educate our children? We have school rooms with no books, we have some schools with not enough teachers, we have some people teaching in conditions that are horrible."

- Patricia Radcliffe, Roanoke

"There's a wonderful solution for this whole prison mess. If this country would spend the money that they are spending in the prison system, and buy an island, or a chain of islands, and have them send, maximum security island, minimum security island . . . and if people choose to live like animals, treat them like animals. Ship 'em off, drop 'em off and say, here it is. Put the murderers together, sooner or later they'll kill each other off. Get them out of the country."

- Joe White, Pulaski

"In the last session we had the spectre of the governor wanting to reduce taxes by a certain amount to give, make sure everybody had a tax break and at the same time to go into debt to pay for the prisons. Is that fiscal responsibility?"

- Bill Richardson, Blacksburg

by CNB