Madam, – Tom O’Connor’s suggestion (October 16th) would be entirely sensible if our prison population consisted largely of rogue bankers, corrupt public officials or paedophile priests. But as our typical prisoner profile is young, under-educated, largely from deprived backgrounds, often drug-dependent and inevitably in the lowest streams of earning potential, I wouldn’t fancy our chances of recouping costs of incarceration in the Mountjoy Hotel or similar establishments. It might make more sense to acknowledge the correlation between social deprivation and non-white-collar crime, and to invest in its reduction, not by increasing prison places but by enhancing the life chances of our poorest citizens through a fairer distribution of national resources. – Yours, etc,