Where California leads, the rest of the world often follows eventually. So at the risk of giving Michael McDowell ideas in the middle of an election campaign, I thought I'd share with you some of the Golden State's newest thinking in the area of corrective justice, courtesy of a recent feature in the New York Times.
At first glance, I thought the article was something to do with the no-frills airline Easyjet: or to be more exact, its seafaring wing, which was launched three years ago and now offers cheap cruises to destinations including Greece. The misunderstanding arose because the photograph accompanying the NYT piece was dominated by the Easyjet theme colour, orange.
It featured a young woman in a lurid orange T-shirt, reading a book on a bunk-bed in a room with pale orange furnishings. The accommodation was small and Spartan, but also clean. Bright light - from the Mediterranean sun, I assumed - flooded in from an unseen window. And for all the world, the woman on the bunk could have been whiling away the hours on a low-cost trip between Mykonos and Athens.
But as it turned out, she was not cruising the Aegean Sea. She was in jail, in California. In Orange County, to be exact, which explained a lot. And any similarity with low-cost travel was further diminished by the fact that she was paying a hefty $82 (€60) a night for her cell. According to the Easycruise website, cabins on a Greek island trip start at only €33.
The woman pictured in the article was Nicole Brockett, a bartender who, serving a short sentence for drunk driving, had taken advantage of a service offered by a dozen or so Californian prisons, under which inmates can "upgrade" for a fee ranging from $75 to $127 a day.
The service is only available to minor offenders. And even then, the jails do not offer business class. Paying inmates still usually have to share a cell. The money just entitles them to a little privacy, as well as increased distance from serious criminals, and in some cases, the right to use an iPod or computer. They also get to be referred to as "clients".
As she faced her 21-days in custody, according to the NYT, Brockett "shopped around for the best accommodations, travelocity.com-style", and was happy enough with the result. "It's clean here," she said. "It's safe and everyone is very nice. I haven't had a problem with any of the other girls. They give me shampoo." The pay-to-stay jails have been in existence for a few years, in fact, attracting little attention. This is partly because they no longer need to advertise as they did at the start. In the 1990s, one upgrade-enabled facility in Pasadena even had a catchy slogan: "Bad things happen to good people". Now the jails fill up without the need for such slick marketing.
The system only made waves recently because of the case of a former Orange County assistant sheriff who went bad. He had been convicted of perjury and misuse of public funds, "including the unauthorised use of a county helicopter". Consequently, the prosecutors objected to him going to a jail that allowed inmates to use computers and mobile phones.
Here in Ireland, the idea of prisoners having mobile phones seems ridiculous. Imagine.
Next thing you know, inmates would be ringing Liveline from their cells! But even in California, the upgrade system has its critics, who complain that people convicted of the same offence can have completely different experiences of prison based on their disposable income.
Supporters counter that the paying clients subsidise the rest of the system to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. And the NYT concedes that, while the pay-to-stay facilities are vastly better than the general run of Californian prisons, clients are still under no illusion about where they are. "No doubt about it, the self-pay jails are not to be confused with luxury spas." I take the NYT's point on this. In any case, as I suggested earlier, we will probably have the pay-to-stay system here eventually, no doubt involving the principle of "co-location", with five-star private prisons sharing the campuses of State-run facilities.
In the meantime, since the orange-themed picture provoked it, it's the comparison between California's upmarket jails and Europe's downmarket travel industry that I find disturbing.
I haven't been on a no-frills cruise yet. But the modern flying experience, certainly, is like a short custodial sentence. Accommodation is cramped and unhealthy (unless you can upgrade, which is unlikely). You have to share your cell with complete strangers. Sharp objects are banned. And of course you can't use your mobile phone, even if you need to make an urgent call to Liveline.
Clients who fly with Ryanair especially complain that, in return for the low fares, the airline treats them like they have no rights, human or otherwise. In the worst cases, the experience robs them of all dignity.
Yes, I know I'm exaggerating a bit. There's still a big difference between going to prison and flying to the south of France on holiday. But the news from California suggests the gap is narrowing.