Illinois can benefit from Thomson deal

There are really two questions at issue in the matter of moving detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to tiny Thomson, Ill.

The first - should prisoners be removed from Guantanamo Bay at all? - is certainly worthy of debate, but, as a key plank in the Barack Obama campaign for the presidency and the subject of an executive order, appears to be little more than an academic exercise. That leaves us with the question of why Thomson - as well as its ancillary point, why not Thomson?

The prospect of housing the Gitmo detainees carries the benefits that accrue to any prison, specifically thousands of jobs and an economic boost of up to $1 billion in this case. If such a center is to be placed somewhere in the continental United States, why shouldn't Thomson and, more to the point, cash-strapped Illinois deserve consideration for sharing in the benefits?

Even at a price in the hundreds of millions, a federal purchase of the Thomson prison alone won't solve the state's multibillion-dollar budget woes, but it and the consequent income and sales tax revenues that come with it will surely help push us in the right direction.

As for its peculiar advantages, Thomson boasts at least two qualities especially necessary for the location of a supermaximum-security prison.

One, it is fairly remote, with Clinton, Iowa, more than eight miles away and across the Mississippi River as the only population center of 25,000 or more within 25 miles. Rockford and the Quad-Cities, the nearest towns of substantial population in the 100,000 range, are both nearly an hour away. As a terror target, whether for the rare family visitors who may be allowed or anyone else, Thomson has almost no value, and as an escape threat - assuming someone could do what has never been done at a supermax federal prison - it offers escapees nowhere to go. It is at least as well-situated as the federal prison at Marion, which has housed terrorists and the most-dangerous violent criminals without incident.

Second, it is already built. Set aside for the moment the only-in-Illinois politics that willed the penitentiary into its white-elephant existence, and you still have a state-of-the-art prison and - except for some retrofitting that the feds will have to do - it's virtually ready to house the most dangerous criminals.

Critics have tried to argue Thomson is needed to alleviate crowding at state prisons, but as with the argument over shuttering Guantanamo Bay, the politics and budgeting of our state have rendered that argument moot. If Thomson, which hasn't really been used in eight years, isn't sold to the federal government, it isn't going to take in any maximum-security inmates for years, if ever.

So, the issue of whether to house Guantanamo detainees at Thomson appears to come to this: The location is as good as almost any other in the country and probably better than most. Understanding that, our energies need to shift away from arguing pointlessly over whether to sell the facility to the federal government, and toward both maximizing how much we can get for it and demanding assurances that it will indeed be escape- and terror-proof. All other avenues promise only frustration and costly delays.