More good sense from our conservative contributor Dr. Frank Shizenhausen

I have always admired the American approach to law and order. They sure understand how to deal with scumbags in the US. Like Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has told prison inmates that if they want to watch TV they must generate the electricity by pedalling stationary bicycles.

But even this approach doesn’t go far enough. Why should prisoners even have access to a television? These remorseless killers and dirtbags shouldn’t need a reward to do the right thing – the reward is in making good the harm done to society.

So let’s get them pedalling, or running on treadmills. Because what we need is for the most dangerous of our prisoners to be fitter, leaner and tougher.

In fact, why are we limiting ourselves to prison power generation? Our electricity sector is in crisis, and the cost of generating and transmitting power continues to climb. This is largely due to too many nanny state interventions, and woolly-headed environmentalists blocking attempts to build more coal power plants. We have enormous amounts of the stuff, but can’t use it because the climate scientist cabal tells us that to do so will increase our carbon emissions. It has probably never occurred to the climate change lobby that the flatulent nonsense they continue to produce is the real threat.

As for global warming, ask any shivering Siberian what he thinks about it. Why does it have to be all bad?

Back to my point. If we can get prisoners creating enough electricity to power TV sets, why not plug the lot of them into the National Grid? Not literally of course, because as entertaining as watching a bunch of killers getting fried would be, the seared flesh might damage or clog critical components of the system.

No, I’m talking about forcing these wrongdoers to contribute electricity back into the National Grid. It will help them to contribute towards the cost of their incarceration, but if we do it right we could end up creating an entirely new electricity model.

Critics will of course point out that we would need an awful lot of prisoners to generate much power. But we can deal with that problem easily. Why don’t we just provide cash incentives to those working in the justice system to ensure the number of prisoners continues to rise? It wouldn’t be that hard to allocate a percentage of a prisoner’s “earnings” (i.e. the money saved by the prisoner’s generation activities) to the police officers, lawyers and judges responsible for jailing him. Pretty soon just about anyone who steps into a courtroom or even looks at a copper will be in jail.

Not only would this ensure an endless supply of human generators, but our streets would be safer.

But this will never happen, because it’s simply impossible in this country to have a mature, grown-up debate about hauling everyone off to prison and forcing them to pedal as if their lives depended on it. You can blame the liberal news media for that. Damn their eyes!

I say, it it me or is the room spinning? Where did I leave my medicine? Nurse!