<B>by Deepa BHOOKHUN</B>

I am attempting to clean up my house and because there is so much crap in it, I just decide to pile the junk in a closet so that when the nice people come and visit, they think, ?Wow, her house is so nice and clean.? And then I feel good about myself. In the meantime, the once neat pile of junk is turning into a messy one. Until one day it overflows and so I decide to build another closet instead of taking time out to sort the junk out and put some of the stuff back where they belong. And then, one fine day, something will rot in one of the closets (it could be anything, I wasn?t exactly looking at what I was throwing in there, was I? I was just intent on hiding the ugly) and the nice people who come and visit will altogether revise their opinion of my once nice house and me. Familiar scenario? I?m sure; we?re all guilty of it.

Now substitute closet for prisons and house for country. This is exactly what some people are trying to do to this country.

We are all too ready to jump, criticize and point the finger whenever violent incidents happen behind the walls of our penal institutions. We are all too ready to play the blame game and identify the problem as one of mismanagement. But we want to keep on piling the bloody closet with junk.

230 prisoners will be released in December. And while prison staff (we?ll call them the closet elves) is rejoicing because at long last, they are getting a helping hand from the authorities, what do the responsible people (the residents of the house) of our society do? They shout, they jump to the wrong conclusion the way people who wear blinkers do. You know why prison staff and management are rejoicing? Because the situation in the prisons would become so much more manageable once staff have more control over detainees by waving the threat of cutting down on their remission quota if they misbehave. The situation will improve because the penal population will go down at a slightly faster rate than it is doing now, thus creating a more favourable climate for rehabilitation. (We?ll have a well-ordered and neat closet that smells of summer).

But the stubborn people who are happy with the illusion that they have a clean house will tell you sorting out the closet is bad. The stubborn and blinker-wearing people will tell you they are concerned about the restoration of remission to all detainees without exception because rapists might be encouraged to rape handicapped children.

Hello? So a sick-in-the-head person with the urge to rape a handicapped person would hold his throbbing urge just because if he is sent to jail, he won?t be entitled to early release? No wonder the closet is dark and stuffed. And smells?

We need to clean the closet, sort it out. For us to do this, we need to start thinking of the whole house, rather than what is just on show. So let?s start thinking out of the box for a change, let us start taking a holistic approach to problems. And let us start being responsible in our criticisms. So we can not only have a nice house but also a nice closet. So the niceness of the house is not just the facade. So the beauty is inside out.