A Super SUPERMAX Prison

With President Obama ordering the federal government to purchase an underused prison in Thomason Illinois, concerns for the safety of those who will be employed there along with the citizens in the area are definite and legitimate concerns. Just as New York City is facing a problematic situation with security concerns over the trial of five suspected terrorists of the 9/11 attacks, Thomason may very well face the same issues and without the means to adequately secure the area or its people.

Thomason Correctional Institute, originally built in 2001 to house maximum security prisoners, currently has only 200 minimum-security inmates being housed. Budget problems had delayed the prison being opened or used at full capacity. Now, however, the federal government plans to make this rural county state prison into a super supermax, with far more stringent security measures and technology than supermax prisons use today, to house but a few of the inmates currently located at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It will be handled as a standard federal prison but with part of it leased to the Department of Defense for that purpose.

According to Senator Roland Burris, D-Ill., this new super supermax prison will provide nearly 3000 jobs for residents of Illinois. Or will it? Who will actually be hired to watch over these terrorist suspects? What kind of training is the federal government going to provide those in the local workforce that can even be hired as guards? How much money will it cost to upgrade the prison facility to be a super supermax location? How much of the prison may end up under military control and what about a conflict of interest between the military, federal government, state government, and local citizens? Who is going to provide the increased security that will be needed for the entire region, let alone the country itself?

Many American people have made it known that they do not believe bringing any or all of the Guantanamo inmates into the United States will improve security or lessen any risk (via retaliation through the efforts of al-Qaida or other Islamic terrorist groups) to those communities that end up with these terrorist prisoners. Instead, perhaps it would be cheaper and safer to buy an island and build a prison just to house those terrorists who are intent on destroying the United States of America versus putting innocent people at a higher risk of terrorism.

Sources:
Rural Illinois prison to get some Gitmo detainees, by Henry C. Jackson, AP, December 15, 2009
A Terrorist Trial in New York City, by Ben West and Fred Burton, November 18, 2009