"Then the solution, it seems, would not be abolishing imprisonment, but in making it more even-handed."
Well, no, I never said that people ought to be in prison because of drug use. And that covers at least half of the people who are in prison in the U.S. right now. And then, stealing because you're hungry and can't find work is very different from stealing as in the pin striped thuggery that's taken place over the last generation.
"The law, in all its majesty, allows both rich and poor to sleep under bridges" but it is a very misleading evenhandedness.
I used to play bridge with a tightly wound frenchman who stabbed his wife to death in a fit of jealousy. He went to prison for a few years. Did that make it less likely for him to stab his next girlfriend? I don't know. I don't think so, though obviously people who routinely resort to violence need some kind of attention.
Joanna