GUANTANAMO BAY MILITARY PRISON

I just read that the military prison in Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) Cuba is spending an average of $900,000.00 per inmate annually. By anyone’s standards this is an exorbitant amount of money. A major portion of the cost is the fact that everything needed there must be shipped in from the states. Everything from maintenance supplies to food to judges and lawyers. The President would like to close the prison. From purely a financial aspect I agree with him. Yes, I am shocked as well. I normally do not agree with Obama on anything. If he told me the sky was blue I would go outside to check. But, looking at things from a cost cutting angle, closing the Gitmo prison makes sense. The part the baffles me is that none of our leaders can figure out what to do with the 166 current inmates at Gitmo. This is the simple part. Place these inmates in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).

The BOP is a professional government agency. Keeping inmates and running prisons is what they do and they do it well. Average per inmate cost that the BOP spends is $30,000.00. This is a savings of $870,000.00 per inmate, per year, or a total annual savings of $144,420,000.00. This is quite a chunk of money and a considerable savings to the American tax payer. There are other advantages to this. The government then has the ability, if need be, to split some or all of these inmates up. These 166 inmates could be separated and placed at numerous prisons throughout the United States. Should the government wish to keep most of these inmates in one location that is also easy. We have several smaller Federal Detention Centers that sit on the same grounds as larger Federal Prisons. These detention centers usually hold pre-trial, pre-sentencing, and hold over (in-transient) inmates. These detention centers are not normally at full capacity. Move the current inmates from one of these and place the Gitmo inmates there. Problem solved, the inmates are in a safe, secure, well run institution and the American people save money. A win win situation in my book.