California governor seeks to operate prisons in Mexico for undocumented felons

Governor looks south of the border for prisons
by Wyatt Buchanan, San Francisco Chronicle

(01-26) 04:00 PST Sacramento --

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Monday that the state could save $1 billion by building and operating prisons in Mexico to house undocumented felons who are currently imprisoned in California.

The governor floated the idea during an appearance at the Sacramento Press Club in response to a question about controlling state spending. His speech came on the same day that changes in prisoner parole and credits for time served took effect.

"We pay them to build the prisons down in Mexico and then we have those undocumented immigrants be down there in a prison. ... And all this, it would be half the cost to build the prisons and half the cost to run the prisons," Schwarzenegger said, predicting it would save the state $1 billion that could be spent on higher education.

About 19,000 of the state's 171,000 prisoners are illegal immigrants, according to the most recent statistics available online. The state spends more than $8 billion a year on the prison system.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/26/MNV11BND6M.DTL

The Governator also wants to allow private prisons to compete with state-run ones like businesses in order to save money. However, private prisons may or may not be totally secure. The prison guard union criticized this decision because it thinks that it violates Mexican sovereignty.

nt

The prison guards are right, although I seriously doubt they care about Mexico. They are most likely reacting to the idea of less prisoners means less jobs and less power.

Also, private prisons competing with the State has been a disaster already. When profit motive entered into the prison system we saw an explosion in the prison population. More private prisons would mean more demand for customers, which is a sick system.

Instead of figuring out what to do with prisoners, steroid boy should be working on plans to reduce the need for more prisons, like decriminalizing pot, and creating more jobs so that people don't see crime as a viable source of income.

imprison its citizens for crimes comitted here...why would they feel any need to oblige us? They didn't commit the crimes there...yeah, send us a billion or so, then the prisoners, and we'll let them go and pocket the money.

We already pretty much are putting criminals in a foreign country, aren't we?