Allysma,

What I say below has nothing to do with Ajay. Just a general observation, and I hope you will try to read it without associating with this specific case.

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I find an answer in your reply about why there are so many people in jail these days. Look, not only convicted child rapist, I don't want any liar, thief, robber, adult rapist, foul mouthed etc next to my door. But that doesn't mean I have to lock him up in the jail for all his life.

American societies have gone through this change: 100 years ago, people were sent to jail to rot there. Chain gangs were regular ; a gritty expose film, I am a fugitive from chain gang (1932), a Paul Muni starrer, had vividly portrayed the life in jail at the time. Perhaps due to these movies and other publicity,  then, suddenly, a pang of conscience struck common people, and people thought convicts should be sent to jail so that 'they can be reformed there and sent back to the society as an useful person'. It was the era when tough jails like Alcatraz etc became very unpopular in America and were shot down. Now, again, people have become cynical and prisons are overcrowded. This is a far cry from UK and Nepal--where people recoil from sending people to jail for the long term. The rest of the world has been so different from the USA that if you see the ranking of countries who send people to capital punishment, USA ranks along side such pariah states as Iran, North Korea , China and so on. USA has become a state of cynical citizens, who are suspicious of everybody, even their neighbor, and who believe that man's actions and whims are incorrigible no matter what lesson you teach him..

I wish you could read this news that came out today in a Nepali newspaper. http://www.nayapatrika.com/newsportal/cover_story/you-can-improve.html

This is a story of a man who robbed a bank, and was sent to jail. After jail, he goes to a village and starts a cooperative and a school. This reform is a major news in a national newspaper. It probably shows undying optimism people have in another people in Nepal, and it is significant because we are about to forgive thousands of guerillas/army personnels who might have committed murder in the past.  Before 1996, when Maoists brutality started, Nepali society was so peaceful that murderers were thought to be rare, and murders were thought to be occuring mostly accidentally; incidentally, the highest punishment a man could be given was 20 years, and lots of time, it counted days and nights as separate, so 20 years tend to be 10 years, actually. Even the most brutal rulers, Rana rulers, didn't dare to give capital punishment; when they killed four martyrs in 1940 AD, they were willing to waive the punishment if those people had apologized.

I won't make a value judgement on which system is right. But as Jesus himself once said, something along the line,   'let he who hadn't sinned cast a stone first'.., I start out with the assumption that we all are weak and are liable to commit some kind of crimes , in some kind of circumstances, in our life.  And that no matter how hard we be on criminals, no matter what our wishful thinking is, this world won't be free of them.

It was nice conversing with you. Have a blessed life, and I have a new week to start, lots of works to do which I didn't do in the weekend, and won't be back.