Jerry Brown: Send inmates to Maine

Attorney General Jerry Brown - lamenting an "institutional conveyor belt" that perpetuates gang crime - told a Central Valley crowd that the prison crisis might be solved by moving California inmates far away from their homes. Very far away. The Fresno Bee:

"We have a paradox in that even the gang members we put in prison can still be in control of crimes outside by communicating with other gang members," Brown said. "Maybe some should be sent to Maine instead of Corcoran, so that they'd be further away from their crime network."

In a move that has angered the state's prison guard union, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has issued an executive order to transfer California inmates to out-of-state facilities. Currently, the state prison system has about 170,000 men and women housed in prisons built for 100,000. But shipping inmates to prisons in Maine might not work either.

According to Maine prison Commissioner Martin Magnusson, the state has its own emergency - overcrowding by a whopping 293 inmates. "The crowding is taking a major toll on staff, who are working so much overtime that some are sleeping in their cars after their shifts because they're too tired to drive home, said the commissioner, who met with 250 corrections staff on Monday to hear their frustrations," the Morning Sentinel reported.

Anyway, it's the concept that counts.