President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador may take some of the pressure off US jails and prisons.
All sorts of positives there:
- El Salvador gets a couple of thousand well-paid (by local standards) jobs, and buys food, etc. for the prisoners from local markets, benefiting their entire economy;
- El Salvador's relationship with the Trump administration becomes solid as a rock;
- If any US prisoners should manage to escape, they'll be in a foreign country where rewards will be paid in hard currency to anyone who turns them in;
- If a future, more liberal US administration decides to terminate the deal, El Salvador ends up with a nice new prison and thousands of people trained to work hard, and extra space to accommodate its own criminals. It can also offer a similar deal to any other country battling to find (and to afford) sufficient space to accommodate its criminal element.
- Prison corporations in America have long been the subject of complaints (fully justified, from my experience with them as a prison chaplain) about how they treat prisoners entrusted to their care. We can shut them all and export their inmates, and still save money, because I think El Salvador will charge a lot less per prisoner than a private US corporation.
- Finally, hard cases who cause trouble in the US prison system can be given an ultimatum. Get with the program, or be sent to El Salvador, where their program is a darn sight tougher than ours and you will, repeat, will get with it - or else. If they're in any doubt, show them videos of El Salvador's CECOT in operation.
So much winning!
Peter
4 comments:
I've thought that outsourcing our prison system's hard cases to Russia would be a splendid idea. The Russians get their gold dug, we get rid of a bunch of hard cases, and if they escape, well---welcome to Siberia! Too bad you don't speak Russian!
I think this is a great solution for those illegal immigrants who committed crimes, were deported and then came back to commit another crime.
Being incarcerated in a US prison is like retiring to an all-inclusive resort.
Being incarcerated in El Salvador...maybe not so much.
I am unsure that SCOTUS would allow US citizens to be imprisoned outside of the US. And I doubt a Central American prison would be better run as far as the prisoners were concerned than a for profit system here.
However as far as non-citizens serving sentences in the US, why not? They do their time and then have to figure out how to home from there.
I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand I think this is an excellent idea. It would help tremendously. On the other hand I can see this being abused and abused hard by the left.
Take the Jan 6th folks who were never given a trial and simply snatched and put in horrible conditions. I look at the scum willing to do that, and think how bad would it be if they did something like that again, but this time, sent innocents off to that hell hole. And I know they absolutely would without hesitation or second thought.
So I would suggest a compromise. Trump should accept the deal, but have it rewritten so only death row inmates, and illegals who committed horrible crimes while in the country are sent. Maybe a few other groups, but nothing so open ended. Which would allow leftists to use it as a loophole to vanish political prisoners or opposition at a later date.
It really sucks as I would really like to empty our prisons into theirs since they are offering, but because of certain individuals, we can't nice things without them trying to burn it down out of spite and hate.
- W
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