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By C1 Staff
WASHINGTON – The ACLU has submitted a proposal to the Justice Department which would all but eliminate the need for prisons, jails, and penitentiaries in America.
The rights group is demanding a “cage free” incarceration system be developed in many of the wide-open spaces in states like North Dakota, New Mexico, Wyoming, and elsewhere.
Evan Bledheardt, a local ACLU representative, said, “We have vast swaths of federal land that are just being wasted — nobody is there and nothing is happening there. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of square miles of wide open spaces which would be ideal for use as a humane home for people convicted of crimes. There would be no need for bars or fences. The inmates could form cities and communities naturally. Whole new sectors of commerce would surely arise. These inmates will flourish.”
Officials in some of those “wide open” states are not enthusiastic about the plan.
“We will never allow these ‘refugees’ to cross our borders,” said one official in Wyoming. “We’re not going to open our most cherished spaces to people who have no respect for the rule of law. They have been convicted by a jury of their peers, and they should be locked up, not given free reign over the natural beauty of our great state. They should not be roaming free on the majestic countryside of our great nation.”
Despite the resistance, some are warm to the idea.
“Have you ever been to one of those ‘fly-over’ states? I can barely even stand watching out the window from 37,000 feet up — miles and miles of nothingness,” said Susan Haddebuy, a Democratic Representative from Southern California. “There are no coffee houses. There are no Apple stores. There are no boutiques selling second-hand clothes from the 80s. What better place to put convicted criminals than a hellhole like that?”
The plan stipulates that inmates transferred from walled facilities to “cage free” settlement zones would be given a one-time stipend equal to the amount of money a state would spend to incarcerate them for one full year. The inmates would then have the ability to purchase materials to construct a home and begin their re-integration into a peaceful society.