DON'T LAUGH: TM HELPS REFORM CRIMINALS

When The Associated Press sent out a recent story about the St. Louis judge who began an experimental program of putting criminals through training in transcendental meditation, it was hard not to chuckle. After all, TM was what hippies did in the age of flower power, right?

But take a closer look at Judge David Mason's effort. Using funds he raised privately, Mason and other judges have put some 100 offenders through a six-week meditation program as a condition of probation.

Results? Only one or two repeat offenders.

That's a remarkable record at a time when the fruits of mandatory sentencing are fully ripening into a prison-building spree -- a time when the United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world.