(latimes.com) SACRAMENTO  Corrections officials prepared to sign the first contract allowing prisoners to be shipped to other states Thursday as legislators debated the plan’s merits and one expert said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should forget short-term fixes and instead convene a bipartisan summit on punishment in California.
One day after the governor proclaimed an emergency in the state’s severely overcrowded prisons, Republicans praised Schwarzenegger for decisive action while Democrats raised legal questions about the move and accused the governor of sitting by while the crisis escalated….
…Although the first round of relocations  starting with 200 inmates next month  will be voluntary, prison officials said the governor’s emergency order gives them authority to move convicts against their will as needed to free up beds. Currently, the penal code requires an inmate’s consent for such an out-of-state move…
…Franklin Zimring, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall, said that although the transfer plan might buy the state time, it ignores fundamental problems with California’s sentencing laws and penal policies  problems that have helped foster the population crunch.
“What we need to do,” Zimring said, “is sit down and put the entire governance of punishment in California on the table for an extensive, bipartisan analysis and fixing.”
In Indiana, California’s move to export its convicts was met with enthusiasm. Gov. Mitch Daniels issued a statement gleefully announcing that he would soon be housing 1,200 California felons. (more…)
Something about this doesn’t sound right. Especially due to the fact that Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is “enthused” about such a move. What does this mean for tax payers in his state?
Hmmm. When a governor gets excited about housing some other states problem, it has to make you wonder, what’s the benefit for Indiana? It doesn’t say if California is going to foot the $60/day bill (or $26 million per year for 1200 prisoners). I wonder, since it’s a private prison, what the owners are going to get out of it. Cheap labor maybe? Something smells funny.
It should smell funny. Shipping people cross country is not the answer. We have got to take a serious look at crime and punishment. 80% of the prision population is made up of idividulas somehow involved in the drug trade. If we legallized drugs there would be no over crowding problem. and we would wash away the national debt with the tax revenue.
I’m all about singing some Peter Tosh today. Sing it Saudia!! Legalize it…dooon’t criticize it!! (by the way I didn’t know you were a cop, very cool).