If you are interested in unusual exports, North Carolina will appeal to you. More than 200

people convicted in the state's courts are now incarcerated in Rhode Island or Oklahoma. The governor of North Carolina, James Hunt, has asked the legislature to authorize the housing of a total of 1,000 convicts in other states' prisons. A temporary measure, explain state officials, until the pressure on their own prisons eases. Yet the mind turns to 18th century Britain's shipping of convicts to Australia, and to James Oglethorpe's establishment of the colony's Georgia in part as a refuge for people released from debtors' prisons.

Today's America is dotted with prisons recently built either as private profit-making companies or by governments as "economic-development enterprises". Since December, North Carolina has signed two contracts in Rhode Island, one for housing 75 convicts at the Adult Correctional Institution in Cranston, the other for 230 at the Detention Facility Corporation in Central Falls. It has another contract for 240 convicts with the town of Hinton, Oklahoma, and the Hinton Economic Development authority, and it is negotiating a deal with a private prison near Memphis, Tennessee.

The exporting of prisoners, says Franklin Freeman, head of the state's Department of Correction, "is accomplishing our purpose that is, to get more space quickly." This dates back to an agreement the state made in 1988, to settle a federal court suit brought by inmates who complained that North Carolina's prisons were so crowded as to be unconstitutionally inhumane. The state which had been stacking prisoners into three-tier banks, agreed to provide dormitories with 50 square feet per inmate.

But this meant keeping the prison population below a total of 21,400 by releasing on parole any number in excess of that. Over the past seven years the average time served by North Carolina's prisoners has dropped from 40% of the original sentences to 18.5%. Since June, 42 people on parole have been charged with murder. All this has led to the policy of exporting prisoners, as well as to a zealous attempt to reduce the amount of crime in the state.

Governor Hunt has summoned the legislature into special session to consider his 36-point anti-crime plan, which ranges from more activity after school for adolescents, to stop them getting into trouble on the streets, to stiffer penalties for serious offenders. A new sentencing scheme is already designed, from next year, to provide longer sentences for major crimes. But this. of course, does not thin out the prison population. North Carolina expects to expand its prison capacity to 26,200 by 1996. Meanwhile Michael Easley, the attorney-general, has asked the federal courts to let him cut the prisoners' space ration to 35 square feet apiece, which would give room for an extra 4,000 inmates.

The export policy is expensive, it costs North Carolina more to send convicts to other states than to house them in its own prisons. It pays just under $71 a prisoner a day for those at Central Falls in Rhode island, compared with $64 for its own medium-security inmates and $47 for its minimum-security ones. Only those two categories are transported, not the most hardened criminals. Even so, there are jitters in Rhode Island. Ten troublemakers have just been sent back from Central Falls.

All the following statements are true about North Carolina's exporting prisoners EXCEPT ______.

A．It has signed four contracts for sending prisoners to other states

B．It wants to find more space quickly for prisoners

C．Many prisoners on parole have committed crimes again

D．It is eager to reduce crimes in the state