So, it costs 32 times as much to house an inmate at Guantanamo Bay ($800,000/year) than it does to house them in a federal prison ($25,000). So, why don’t we double Guantanamo like Mitt Romney once suggested? Or, more seriously, why don’t we close the goddamned disgraceful facility and have the collective courage to act like we believe in our system of justice? The administration is still trying to talk reason to Congress, but it’s hopeless.
… the Obama administration had made attempts to rein in costs of detaining prisoners by urging the closure of the facility. [Army Brig. Gen. Greg] Zanetti’s report said that Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta wrote a letter to GOP congressional leaders noting that while Guantánamo spends “more than $800,000 per detainee,” “our federal prisons spend a little over $25,000 per year, per prisoner, and federal courts and prosecutors routinely handle numerous terrorist case a year well within their operating budgets.” Nonetheless, Republicans — who claim to be concerned about the deficit about all else — have refused to even seriously consider shuttering the camp.
It’s not totally fair to blame it all on Republicans. True, they’re the one’s instigating the fear-mongering and if they would cease and desist, no Democrat would make a peep. But they’ve scared most of the Democrats in Congress into complete humiliating capitulation on the issue of closing Gitmo. Almost none of them had the president’s back when he tried to close it and they’re not going to be there for him now.
Still, it shows you how little the Republicans really care about wasting government resources that they’re willing to pay 32 times the going rate to incarcerate a group of people that still includes some innocents.
