As Michigan is in a full-blown budget crisis, the Department of Corrections and Governor Granholm proposed yesterday that Camp Manistique, a prison labor camp in the Upper Peninsula, be shut down.  Closing Camp Manistique, which is a minimum-security facility, would save the state $4.5 million per year.  It would also cost 45 prison employees their jobs (although according to The Mining Journal, both prisoners and employees would be transferred to other facilities).

The prison employees are unionized, and they tend to vote Democrat, therefore the Dems have undertaken a full-blown campaign to keep the prison open.  Prisoners currently incarcerated in Michigan, of course, cannot vote.  Although shutting down Camp Manistique would not actually reduce the number of prisoners in the state, Michigan, like other states, has a detention and corrections budget spiraling out of control.  Michigan’s annual prison budget is $1.9 billion, a fifth of the state’s general fund.  Tom Clay from Citizens Research Council of Michigan says that if Michigan didn’t have such high rates of incarceration compared to other Great Lakes states, the prison budget would be closer to $1.4 billion.  According to Families Against Mandatory Minimums, “States such as Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania have more residents than Michigan but incarcerate fewer inmates. Michigan's per-capita incarceration rate is the country's 11th-highest, ranks higher than seven other Great Lakes states and is fourth-highest among the 11 most populous states.”