The Sun made the right decision to print on the front page a story about the city jail lockdown ("City jail lockdown could last through year," Dec. 11). Again and again, heavy-handed responses to internal situations have proven to be failures. It seems inane to tighten security measures in the women's and juvenile units, even though the incidents occurred in the men's section.

In Baltimore and in other sections of the country, the prison systems need imaginative administrators with a sense of proportion. My thanks to The Sun for covering prison issues which have often been ignored by media in the past.

Robert J. Jones, Washington