SEND THE PRISONERS TO MEXICO FOR KEEPING

Presently there's a lot of political noise about prisons and saving
taxpayer money. Why don't we send our prisoners to Mexico? Why don't we pay
our southern neighbor, say, $5,000 per prisoner per year ... instead of
paying maybe 20 times that amount to keep them in the U.S.? Almost 10 years
ago there was talk of letting Russia (with its vast gulag already in place)
take care of our prisoners on the cheap. That would be okay.

A Boston friend of mine said Massachusetts used to send some of its
convicts to Texas for safekeeping. Texas would be okay, too. Anything to
save us money. I just thought Mexico would be better since we're always
giving that country billions for her drug-prevention program (ha!). Now we
could make the drug money contingent on accepting our prisoners into her
facilities (after all, we accept her hardworking children into our country,
why not ask for a little quid pro quo on her part?)

Mississippi's leaders won't go for this, of course. Why not? Self interest
and big money. Take ex-auditor Pete Johnson, for example. He first got into
the "prison business" by chartering a private company on May 4, 1999. Pen
dripping with sarcasm, Bill Minor noted: "Remarkably, 16 days later,
Johnson secured a juicy private prison contract from the estate without
making a public bid."

I know how Leland Hurt Jr. feels: unresponded to. Musgrove, Tuck, Moore and
the others won't answer my letters either. But it's an election year for
some politicians. Maybe if we vote a few out of office, the governor et al
will listen in a couple more years.

Bob Craig

Myrtle