Perhaps I can try to answer part of that question.
Of course the American system is very different. The federal system in the United States doesn't even have a parole system. There is no mechanism to relieve any pressure through that, so the courts had to make a very arbitrary decision in that respect. I believe in the federal system in the United States you serve 85% of your sentence and you get 15% off for good behaviour, but there is no parole system.
The idea that somehow—and I can speak from the federal point of view—the legislation that we brought forward is causing overcrowding is mistaken. At the beginning of 2010 we had approximately 14,000 prisoners in the federal system, with a capacity of 15,000. Officials advised me there would be an increase of prisoners to 16,200 by September of this year. In fact the number is 14,800. They underestimated the number of prisoners coming into the system, or remaining in the system, by about two thirds.
At the same time, we authorized the construction of 2,500 new units in existing prisons to accommodate any additional prisoners that might come. To date, those have not been constructed and it has not been necessary to utilize them, although I can say that prison officials have to be creative in terms of moving individuals, because of the pressures of gangs and the like. So the 2,500 units that we have authorized that are coming online in the next couple of years will be necessary to ease some of those pressures and also to create flexibility in terms of some of the gang problems we have inside prisons.