Mich. In Talks About Calif. Prisoners

[RootBeer]

Gov. Granholm Sends Letter To Calif. Governor About Taking Prisoners

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/19895394/detail.html

[Anakerie]

Gov. Granholm Sends Letter To Calif. Governor About Taking Prisoners

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/19895394/detail.html

California has overcrowded prisons and Michigan has empty ones? Wow! The problem I see with the plan is that California's law makers have a severe problem with approving a budget. Every year. They are still "struggling" with coming up with a budget and the state is going to be sending out IOU's to the state's creditors. If Michigan takes in some of the prisoners, I'm sure they will be expecting some kind of payment from California to pay for the upkeep of all those prisoners... I wonder how they'd like the IOU's?

[withay]

Read some of the comments on that link... According to the comments, the prisons are going to be empty because Michigan is letting prisoners out in massive numbers because they cannot afford to house them all!
The other problem I see is that California prisoners are not going to want to be housed so far from their families. I can smell a lawsuit over that.
All in all, not a good move, IMHO.

[gnm109]

Read some of the comments on that link... According to the comments, the prisons are going to be empty because Michigan is letting prisoners out in massive numbers because they cannot afford to house them all!
The other problem I see is that California prisoners are not going to want to be housed so far from their families. I can smell a lawsuit over that.
All in all, not a good move, IMHO.

I agree. It's likely that litigation would arise. On the other hand, prisoners lose almost all of their rights when they are incarcerated. It's not uncommon in California and other states to house prisoners on the other side of a state far from their families due to the needs and capacity of the prisons.

From a financial standpoint, Michigan could probably use the funds they would recive from housing California's excess prison population. It's no secret that their auto-makinig industry has been decimated in the past 25 years. On the other hand, California is technically bankrupt at this point.

It's a mess.