Get politics out of prison discussion

Perhaps the only reaction worth noting in the firestorm that followed disclosure over the weekend that suspected terrorists could be moved to a federal prison in Illinois came from House GOP Leader Tom Cross.

"There ought to be a debate. There ought to be a discussion," Cross told Daily Herald Projects and Politics Editor Joseph Ryan.

So there ought.

But in the simmering atmosphere of a young election campaign, discussion appears to be the last thing Cross or any other political leader really wants. Partisan battle lines were drawn virtually the moment it was proposed to shift more than 100 Guantanamo Bay detainees to the underused prison in tiny Thomson, and the only talk either side appeared to want to engage in was to show how far it could puff out its chest.

In his continuing rush to embrace the rhetoric of the right, U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk, the one-time moderate Republican 10th District congressman from Highland Park, said the proposal would make northern Illinois "the center of jihadi attention in the world" and painted a picture of a steady stream of terrorist family and friends pouring into Thomson for regular visits.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, on the other hand, dismissed all criticism as an attempt "to scare people" and portrayed the placement in Illinois of some of the world's most dangerous terrorist suspects as a virtually worry-free jobs bonanza with the potential impact of $1 billion on the state economy.

Is it any wonder that Illinois citizens have so little faith in their elected officials?

There is, of course, room to consider keeping Gitmo open, but the president is committed to closing the facility. Assuming he will prevail, the issue becomes where these people should be confined. That issue deserves a reasoned, not an emotional, debate. Reducing the idea of housing dangerous terrorists at an underused prison to an exchange of clever epithets is an insult to the process and to the public it affects.

The Thomson proposal raises questions that demand exploration, not least of which is why the $147 million state-of-the-art prison remains almost vacant in the first place. To be sure, the ultimate use of this white elephant, whose origins date to the Jim Edgar administration, needs to be settled. If the state cannot afford to staff it, what is to be done with it? If Guantanamo inmates are to be housed in the United States, what other region is safer, more cost-effective or more in need of the economic boost? But if such inmates are to be housed in northern Illinois, what assurances do we have that they will not become either potential escapees or magnets for mass terror?

These are serious and legitimate questions. People who raise them on either side are not unpatriotic, greedy, cowardly, naive or stupid. Indeed, failure to consider them is the one shortsighted response. But in the consideration, let's hope the debate is rooted in fact and not the alarmist, partisan rhetoric we've endured so far.