Two unrelated stories caught my eye which gave me pause while reclining on the chesterfield this weekend.

• One of the worst of the Boston pedophile priests has been murdered in jail. While there is no doubt a special spot in Hell now occupied by the guy, what really bugs me is how jail can work sometimes. Why do we have an elaborate system of incarceration, theories of sentencing and due process in court if an unspoken part of the sentence is being exposed to people who will kill you? In my time I have had the opportunity to visit a few guys in jail who had gotten the crap kicked out of them my other inmates. One was on a drunk driving, the other being held for a domestic which, as it turned out, his part was protecting children from a drunking violent wife. While the retributionists out there - and I hear there are a few on the internet - may think this fine, I find it hypocritical. My household hint: I wish we would just drop people into the pit with the wild dogs if that is what is going to happen anyway. Handsome is as handsome does, said my grannie, and if they are sentenced to six years they should not be killed by the system before then.

• Apparently Canada's top cops don't like marijuana grow ops.

  Police officials say the public and the courts need to pay more attention to the proliferation of marijuana grow operations.

  Nice to hear the public plus the courts should not be leading policy making. While it is true that this poses a new danger to the avaerage cop dealing with it, here's my hint: isn't the answer handing out ceramic pots, 25 seeds and a bag of dirt to whoever wants it? The courts and the public are pretty clear that marijuana for personal use is ok. If everyone has free access to starting their own supply, there is no market, price crashes, criminal involvement ceases. This is simple economics. Gangs are not interested in marijuana for horticultural reasons - it's just cash. I also find it funny (but not in the ha-ha sense) that top cops pick the easy topics to spout off about. In a country where children are stolen from the streets of one city and put into sex slavery in another and then treated as the criminal, I would think addressing that should take up at least all of their hobby thinking time.