Monday Map: Thousands of Miles from Home

States are looking at every corner of their budgets to cut spending in this troubled economy and the cost of housing thousands of prisoners is catching up with lawmakers. While North Dakota thinks about housing out-of-state prisoners in local jails to make a few bucks, Maine is looking at the opposite end of the issue and planning to send 118 long-term prisoners out of state.

Today's map comes from a 2007 New York Times article - it shows the distance some states send their prisoners to save money on privatized incarceration. In many states, prisoners are housed many hours from their families, making visits very difficult or nearly impossible. But about 10,000 prisoners are serving outside of their home state, making family visits and contact even more unlikely. Hawaii is among the worst, with one-third of its 6,000 inmates housed in Arizona, Oklahoma, Mississippi or Kentucky.

Sending prisoners to for-profit institutions far from home is a shortsighted policy. Prisoners with no contact with the outside world are more likely to stay in prison or come back once they're released. We should demand that our states do everything in their power to deal with the effects of years of over-sentencing.