Overstaffing, unnecessary luxuries for prison guards delegitimize money request
Last Thursday, the Department of Defense requested $150 million from Congress to fund construction of a new prison building at Guantanamo Bay and make renovations to existing buildings.
This request is very concerning in many ways. Perhaps most obviously, despite repeated promises by President Barack Obama on the campaign trail to close the facility and his statements that Guantanamo is used as a recruitment tool for terrorists, he has allowed it to remain open indefinitely. However, even if Obama or the next president decided they wanted to close it down, they face substantial obstacles to doing so.
Chief among them is the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011, which includes a provision that prohibits the use of federal funds from being used to transfer prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to prisons within the U.S. Due to this law, the complete closure of the facility appears unrealistic. However, even without closing down Guantanamo, there are other meaningful steps that can lessen its importance and high demands. Among them is to hold future suspected terrorists in domestic jails while they await trial. This type of transition would leave current operations at Guantanamo unaffected, as those currently being held there would remain.
Another way to reduce the need for increased funding is to release detainees that have already been cleared by the president to leave. Of the 171 detainees at Guantanamo, roughly half of them, 86, have been cleared by the Obama Administration to be released, but that has not happened yet. This could be because the man behind the foiled 2009 underwear bomber attack was Yemini, just as many of the current detainees are, causing authorities to discriminate against them.
Cutting back on the staffing levels at Guantanamo is another possible way to address the complex’s staggering costs. Currently the prison is staffed by a group of approximately 1,800 troops, government workers and private contractors. Of that staff, approximately half of them are guards, giving the prison a 5-to-1 ratio of guards to prisoners. That ratio is hard to justify; it is more three times the level at Illinois’ super maximum-security prison, and a stunning 15 times higher than the guard-to-prisoner ratio at Alcatraz.
While the Defense Department may complain that their Guantanamo operations are underfunded, they would be well-served by taking a closer look at some of their existing expenses. Housing prisoners already cleared for release, maintaining a staff of 10 times the prisoner population and purchasing fancy massage chairs for the guards all seem to be more of an indication that they have plenty of money rather than not enough.