Sen. Diane Feinstein told Fox News' Chris Wallace that she supports sending detainees from Guantanamo Bay to California maximum security prisons. "In a maximum security prison, I don't worry about it, provided the prison is set up to accommodate it, and I believe we have facilities that are," said Feinstein.
John Amato:
DiFi knows all about prisons since California has such an incredible prison population that is regulated by asinine rules. Also several idiotic ballot initiatives have made it harder to lower the prison population by easing sentences on drug abusers instead of drug dealers. That being said, Diane at least takes the step of not being a bed-wetter when it comes to taking Gitmo prisoners. We as a country certainly know how to incarcerate people.
Bond acts like a frightened little child when talking about Gitmo prisoners and spreads the falsehood that Gitmo prisoners will suddenly be hanging out with the general population of a prison so they can grow al-Qaeda cells behind prison walls and encourage those nasty criminals into criminal behavior. It's absurd and another lunatic right wing talking point. He knows what Maximum security means and if we built new prisons to hold detainees then it would create jobs for the state of California or any state willing to take them. It would also close the disgusting Gitmo hell hole chapter from the Bush era and end it as a recruiting tool for terrorists, a win-win situation all around.
Transcript via CQ Politics:
FEINSTEIN: Well, as you know, I’m one that believes very strongly Guantanamo should be closed, and I believe it can be done.
I’m also one that’s somewhat familiar with the prison structure in the United States. And I know that there are maximum security prisons from which no one escapes in the United States, which are isolated from neighborhoods.
And no one is going to put these people in anyone’s neighborhood, as some have tried to say.
WALLACE: So you’ll be OK with having some of these detainees in California?
FEINSTEIN: Yes. In a maximum security prison, I don’t worry about it, provided the prison is set up to accommodate it, and I believe we have facilities that are.
WALLACE: Senator Bond, you get the last word.
BOND: I -- this is one of the areas on which Senator Feinstein and I disagree. I think Guantanamo is the best place to hold these hardened criminals. We don’t want to put them in our general prison population where they have and will radicalize other prisoners.
They will draw their friends in Al Qaida to come into the area from the outside. I wouldn’t mind seeing them at Alcatraz, but my California friends have minimum amount of high enthusiasm for that.
But if they’re sick, they’re transferred to the federal Springfield, Missouri medical facility in my state, and my constituents and I think that would be a very bad idea.
