Valerie Schultz: Our prisons can handle terrorists just fine, thank you
| Friday, Jun 26 2009 11:19 AM
Last Updated Friday, Jun 26 2009 11:19 AM
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One of the reasons some Americans voted for President Obama last November was because he campaigned on the promise to shut down Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, which has drawn international criticism for almost eight years for detaining people indefinitely, some without ever being charged.
But recently the president's own party, our elected representatives who were theoretically on the same page, shut him down, as the Senate voted 90-6 to keep the place open for business.
Obama has continued to insist, however, that some of the inmates be housed on U.S. soil. So what are those opposed to the relocation really saying, beyond the not-in-my-backyard argument? It seems to me that we as a country are afraid that we don't have a prison, or a justice system, that can handle the incarceration and/or legal affairs of these particular detainees; that we don't believe we can finish what we started. And as an employee of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, I find that attitude offensive.
We correctional employees are well paid to do our jobs. We are professionals. If we cannot manage the inmates in our care, the public is not getting its money's worth. It is frankly an insult to everyone who works at a correctional institution to maintain that we cannot adequately deal with whatever inmates are committed to our facility. On another note, the last I checked, we don't get to choose which criminals will do their time and pay their societal debt in our prison. We are charged with processing and securing whoever arrives.
Of course I cannot speak for my superiors, of which there are about a jillion levels higher than my position, but I believe our facility is sufficiently professional to take on any prisoners, even the controversial Guantanamo detainees. Although we are not a federal prison, I believe that, along with the correctional facilities in other American states and jurisdictions, we are perfectly capable of housing and managing whoever comes through the gate. It's our job. It's what we do. Keeping the Guantanamo quandary away from our shores is like saying that the active gang members in our communities are too dangerous for the local police to protect the public from, so we'd better ship them far away, like to Palau.
The communities in the United States that benefit from the jobs provided by correctional facilities also understand that most inmates will eventually be released back into the community: if we welcome a prison into our backyard, we must also welcome the paroling prisoners. This is where the idea of rehabilitation gains importance. As a religious volunteer at the state prison in my town, I believe in the power of the letter "R" in CDCR. Prisons mainly carry out a correctional purpose, but the public is best served by programs in prison that educate and rehabilitate, with the double aim of producing healthy citizens and reducing the rate of recidivism. "I came in here as a knucklehead," an inmate told me recently. "I'm going out as a father." Which really is the point of the letter "R."
I am not saying that enemy combatants who have pledged themselves to jihad are going to come around to our way of thinking and our Constitution after some classes in anger management. I also understand that closing Guantanamo and bringing the detainees to the U.S. would be a complicated, painstaking federal process, not to mention a wildly unpopular proposition. It just seems to me that if we Americans have no faith in our criminal justice system, or if we lack the capability or the spine to implement that system to prosecute, incarcerate, or rehabilitate the law breakers we have captured and detained, the terrorists win.
