U.S. Prisons overflowing in Iraq

This doesn't fill me with confidence:

[From Tuesday's Wash Post]  BAGHDAD, May 9 -- The number of prisoners held in U.S. military detention centers in Iraq has risen without interruption since autumn, filling the centers to capacity and prompting commanders to embark on an unanticipated prison expansion plan.

As U.S. and Iraqi forces battle an entrenched insurgency, the detainee population surpassed 11,350 last week, a nearly 20 percent jump since Iraq's Jan. 30 elections. U.S. prisons now contain more than twice the number of people they did in early October, when aggressive raids began in a stepped-up effort to crush the insurgency before January's vote.

Over the past six months, I've written a couple of times about the increasing detainee load. It's unclear why the trend is happening. As I put it a couple of months ago:

There could be any number of things going on here, not all mutually exclusive: 1) The  military could  finallybe  getting A-list intel and nabbing real insurgents by the boatloads.  (There's reason to be skeptical of this explanation.) 2)  Lots of innocent (or close to it) civilians are being picked up in sweeps. (Remember last year when the military acknowleged that the Red Cross seemed to be on the mark when it charged that 70-90 percent of prisoners were innocent?)  3) The election-timed suspension of the release of detainees is still in effect.

Tuesday's Post has some hints:

[Maj. Gen.] Brandenburg [the guy in charge of U.S. prisons in Iraq] said he has argued for allowing the cases to work their way through a process that includes a review board staffed by six Iraqis and three members of the U.S.-led multinational force. As of last week, he said, the board had looked at 10,000 cases and approved the release of about 6,000 people.

But Brandenburg acknowledged that the prisons were filling up faster than cases could be reviewed. "We're still getting more detainees in than we're getting rid of," he said.

Then this:

Various indicators, however, point to a detainee population that is increasingly hard-core and therefore likely to remain locked up. Before January, for instance, the review board had ordered releases in about 60 percent of the cases it considered. In recent months, the figure has dropped to 40 percent.

Similarly, since January, 88 percent of those detained have been rated "high risk" under a six-point system that takes into account the circumstances of capture, severity of the alleged offense and affiliation with known insurgent groups.

It's hard to figure out what's going on here. The figures could use some unpacking.  But  I look at that "88 percent" and think... bullshit. Two scenarios: 1) Just two months after a review panel found that 60 percent of detainees should be  freed,  the military has  improved its  intel to such a  degree that  88 percent of detainees are serious bad guys.  2) There is some bureaucratic ass-covering going on. For a grunt responsible for classifying a suspected guerrilla, from a bureaucratic POV which is the better (read:  safer) path to take? It's (kinda) like the old-adage: Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.

Anyway, makes sense for the grunt but not for the military as a whole. It  ain't the best way to fight a counter-insurgency... or win Hearts and Minds.

Comments

[Big Time Patriot]

Now will these hard core prisoner be considered felons and not allowed to vote in future elections?

If we are going to have "democracy on the march" we'd better be setting the Iraqi's up for disputed elections right from the get go..

Nice post..

[Thom]

Lots of of restless, unemployed former military and others.

Any chance some of this just falls under crowd control?

The old-fashioned way of dealing with the poor, the umemployed and the transients: just lock 'em up and keep 'em moving.

Very 14th to 19th century, but what from the point of the average soldier or even commander, maybe a tempting short term solution.

I'm not condoning it--it makes a mockery out of justice and causes all kinds of problems later. But I'm wondering if it's not in part a short-term fix.