Overseas Prisons

[Jonathan Miller]

I am surprised.  My knee-jerk reaction was that a foreign prison would 
have to constitute cruel and unusual punishment.  We certainly have no 
tradition of forced exile as a punishment -- making sending someone 
involuntariy to a foreign prison "unusual".  And given that the U.S. has 
no sovereign authority in the foreign country, the prisoner would lack 
constitutional guarantees that his rights would be respected.  Unlike 
the situation of a private prison in the U.S., the foreign country 
cannot be made to comply with a U.S. court order. -- All of this aside 
from the problem of distance making visits difficult, something that has 
sometimes been found problematic by the courts, though usually not.

Jonathan Miller
Southwestern Law School

Bob Sheridan wrote:

> Or why not on the Moon, once we get our moon program back in gear; or 
> Mars, since we have robot vehicles there.
>
> My guess is that there is either no restraint on Congress, the Courts, 
> or the Executive in sending prisoners away (Britain transported theirs 
> to Australia), OR, alternatively, the founders presumed that they were 
> writing for this country, not some other world.  I do note that we 
> have two non-contiguous states, which, it seems, eliminates arguments 
> based on non-contiguity alone.
>
> Perhaps if transportation is deemed to be cruel and unusual we'll have 
> to take them back...
>
> rs
>
> John Parry wrote:
>
>> As a matter of federal constitutional law, what stops the federal 
>> government from outsourcing prisons to other countries?  That is, if 
>> the federal government decided it would be cheaper to house prisoners 
>> (citizens or not) in Canada, or China, or Chile, would anything in 
>> the Constitution prevent that move?
>>  
>> Assume, also, that Congress designates the federal district court in 
>> the district in which the prisoner was tried as the place in which 
>> any habeas or 1983 claims could be filed by the prisoner, and that 
>> prisoners would be returned to and released in the US upon serving 
>> their sentences.
>>  
>> Is there an obvious legal answer?
>>  
>>
>> *********************************
>> John T. Parry
>> Lewis & Clark Law School
>> 503-768-6888
>> parry at lclark.edu <mailto:parry at lclark.edu>
>> http://ssrn.com/author=68608
>> *********************************
>>  
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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