Into Turin's busy streets last week strode 50 pimps, pickpockets, smugglers and assorted minor menaces, happy advance guard of some 1,000 jailbirds who will be turned loose this month thanks to a new law that faces up to an economic fact of Italian life: a day's workeven in jailis worth more than it used to be.
In Mussolini's prewar heyday, when 20 lire equaled one U.S. dollar, a small-time lo'ser unwilling or unable to pay his fine could work it off in jail at about $2.50 a day. Postwar laws boosted fines in proportion to the lira's value of 620...
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