James Gondles, American Correction Association Statement for the Record: U.S. Prisons Can Safely Hold Guantanamo Detainees

Obama Administration recently released a comprehensive plan for closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay. The plan necessarily requires the government to move some prisoners to the United States for continued detention. To listen to some of rhetoric, one might think that the U.S. prison system is woefully unprepared to handle dangerous terrorists. This is categorically untrue.

U.S. corrections systems, both military and civilian, already hold extremely dangerous people, including terrorists, and have done so for years. Mass murderers, professional assassins, serial killers: they all reside unthreateningly in American penitentiaries run by professionals who generally have been in the business a lot longer than Gitmo has existed.