Saving Prisoners, and Ourselves

By Stan Guthrie

President Obama’s controversial new budget includes $237 million to purchase and prepare the little-used Thomson Correctional Center to house terrorists currently being held at Guantanamo Bay.

Perhaps the most unexpected element to the story, however, is not the massive expenditure to move the detainees onto U.S. soil. It is the fact, given that the exploding U.S. prison population represents one of the few growth industries in the current economy, that a state-of-the-art facility in northwestern Illinois is nearly empty.