CA Plans on Transferring Inmates to Other States

from WDIV Detroit TV 4

California will begin shipping thousands of inmates to prisons in four other states next month at a cost of more than $51 million a year. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared an emergency this month to speed up the no-bid contracts with two private companies. He said the transfers are needed to ease crowding in the nation's largest prison system, where more than 172,000 inmates are crowded into space designed for about 100,000.

More than 2,200 medium-security inmates are to be moved to Indiana, Arizona, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

This summer, Schwarzenegger proposed building two new prisons, adding cells at existing prisons and shifting thousands of inmates to community programs. The California Legislature has not acted on the $6 billion plan.