http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1894373,00.html
Probably a stupid question, but that’s my forte!
So the residents of this town built themselves a state-of-the-art jail, but have no prisoners to put in it.
The article doesn’t really say who they originally wanted to jail, but does go on to say that they expected to get some Gitmo prisoners, but that their US Reps nixed that.
My questions is why wouldn’t my state (California) jump at the chance to send them some inmates? Our prisons are overcrowded. Might even get a price break housing them in Montana. Win\Win, right? What am I missing?
States used to do this. Small states like Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming used to find it cheaper to send their prisoners out of state and pay another state to keep them rather than build their own prisons. But there were lawsuits filed against the practice of relocating prisoners so far from their families and the practice has pretty much stopped. All states are expected to have the capacity to house their own prisoners within the state and exceptions for sending a prisoner out of state are very rare.
From the article you linked to:
But they sued the state and won.
For “mixed messages”, whatever that means.
Sounds like they didn’t overturn the law, which is the fundamental problem.