YOUR stories about the yob who urinated on a dying woman in Hartlepool and the vandals who trashed gravestones in North Ormesby, Middlesbrough (Echo, both Sept 20), left me feeling sad to be one of the same species as these people.

But what left me more shocked and amazed was the article on inmates from Kirklevington Grange prison, near Yarm, being allowed to buy cars and motorbikes, using cash saved from working in and out of prison (Echo, also Sept 20).

Can this money not be used to compensate their victims for what these brainless idiots do to them?

Our society has gone mad. Soon they will be sending them on factfinding holidays, etc.

Prisons will be empty. Maybe then the honest working and the frail could live in them. Maybe not a bad idea - after all, if the prison officers were retrained we would have more protection than we get from the Government-interfered police force on our streets.

What was wrong with the system years ago. Very little, so why mend something that is not broken?

Great Britain? Not any more. Our governments and MPs have smashed it with stupid politicallycorrect ideas. Please turn off the lights when you leave.

Malcolm Stubley, Barnard Castle, Co Durham.