A BOP on the Head

As might be expected, the Land of the Free has the largest prison population in the world, almost forty per cent of whom have a history of mental illness: a metastasis of human warehousing such as Britain's gluttons for punishment at the Ministry for Profitable Incarceration can manage only in their dankest dreams. So severe and widespread are the psychiatric problems in the World Cop's gulag that the Bureau of Prisons has co-opted them as an advertising gimmick. "The clinical diversity you find at the Federal Bureau of Prisons is far beyond private practice," chirrups an Atlanta-based psychologist, with what is doubtless typical Georgian wisdom, justice and moderation. These days even Southern patriots can take pride in diversity at the workplace, provided it refers to the varieties of mental incompetence.