Meet the Patch: Assemblyman Jones Backs State Prisons in Other Nations

Updated at 5:20 p.m. Friday

Assemblyman Brian Jones, who represents much of inland San Diego County and a wide stretch of the border, says Sacramento should explore the “wild idea” of building state prisons in the countries of illegal immigrants to relieve overcrowding in the state.

“Let’s build their prisons in their home countries and send them to those prisons,” he said Friday morning in a meeting with Patch editors in his hometown of Santee.

“They’ll operate at a lot lower expense than being here in California. And let their home country take care of them.”

The freshman Republican’s answer came in response to a question about prison realignment—the move under Gov. Jerry Brown’s latest budget to shift state prisoners to county jails.

Jones, a former La Mesa resident and Santee city councilman who now represents the 77th Assembly District, said the first thing that needs to be addressed is illegal immigration—“and the number of illegal immigrants in our jails. ... The best statistic I’ve been able to come up with is … it’s about 18 percent [of the prison population]. …. One of the positions taken is just take those people out and send them to their home country.

“That would be great if we knew they weren’t going to come back. But right now, they’ve got a free ticket to come back. If we send them home, they’re going to be back. So we’ve got to secure our borders so that we can stop the transfer, back and forth, of illegal immigration—and then send those people home.”

That led Jones, 43, to suggest a look at the idea of building prisons in foreign countries to house illegal immigrants convicted in California.

“I haven’t done any math on this,” Jones said while sitting outside the Starbucks at Santee Trolley Square, with trains passing nearby. “But it might be cheaper to pay for the prisons in other countries—if the other country will run it and keep them actually in prison.”

In a recent letter to the editor, Jones was critical of the current transfer of state inmates to county jails, which he said will lead the counties to free “hardened convicted criminals.”

“With nowhere to house them, they will be released,” he said in the letter. “This move will essentially flood our communities with inmates who have committed serious crimes and not paid their debt to society.”

Would Jones consider changes in the three-strikes law, which also feeds the prison population?

“The three-strikes law I believe has been effective in encouraging some people not to get that third strike,” Jones told Santee Patch editor Steven Bartholow and La Mesa Patch editor Ken Stone.
 
“But does it add to our overcrowding? Absolutely, it’s got to be a part of the equation. It’s not the cause of our overcrowding, but it’s a part of the cause of our overcrowding. So are there some tweaks and reforms we can do to three strikes? Maybe, but I haven’t studied it enough yet to present what those reforms would be.”

Jones said his border district has “more people coming across, illegally, than any of the other districts.”

He said the only immigration-related bill to become law in California—the Dream Act allowing undocumented immigrants access to state financial aid at public universities and community colleges—took the state “in the opposite direction” of where he wants it to go.

“It’s criminal what passed out of Legislature this year and what the governor signed on illegal immigration,” he said.

In fact, he said, California has 4,000 to 12,000 “armed [drug] cartel members” operating out of state forests and rural areas, growing marijuana and processing other illegal drugs.

“Our state’s being taken over by a guerrilla army—that we’re not taking any steps to control,” he said. “Is that what America’s about? I’d argue it’s not.”

He also called marijuana a gateway drug leading to harder drug use and generally supports efforts by cities and counties to close down medical marijuana clinics.

“Can it be used for medicinal purposes? I’m not qualified to make that decision,” Jones said.  “Am I willing to go along with the will of the people? I would be willing to say if it’s restricted purely to people who need it for medicinal purposes—and there’s a legitimate medicinal use for it —I could go along with that.

“What’s happened, as many of knew would happen … it’s been abused and expanded far beyond the intent of the meaning of the law—to where it’s no longer about medicinal purposes. It’s just an excuse to go use it illegally. So I do support the cities and counties cracking down on it.”

He said he hasn’t studied Thursday’s California Air Resources Board decision to regulate emissions via a “cap-and-trade” mechanism.

“I haven’t even read the article yet, since I’m afraid to read it,” he said. “I know it’s going to be horrible.”

He says manmade emissions need to be regulated—but for health reasons and not climate change worries.

“When my family moved here in 1978, the air was pretty dirty here in California,” he said. “So I think there’s some science that backs up we need to control emissions—just for our own health.”

He said “it’s safe to say there’s not enough science to prove that, No. 1, global warming exists and, No. 2, is manmade. When you start regulating emissions on that idea, now you’ve moved into ideology. And now we’re going to limit emissions based on a perceived ideology and a perceived outcome that we haven’t been able to prove yet.”

Asked how he would respond to perhaps 97 percent of scientists saying climate change is real and manmade, Jones said: “There was a time in world history that 97 percent of scientists, philosophers and theologians—well-known scholars—believed that the Earth was flat.”

He was asked: Are you saying that the scientists of today are of the same intellectual authority as the scientists of centuries ago?

“Do we have more knowledge now than we had then? Yes, of course we do,” he said. “But that’s the whole purpose of science is to test theories and prove them right or wrong. I don’t mind these scientists having a theory that global warming is manmade. … I don’t mind scientists trying to prove that their theory is correct. But until they’ve proven that it’s correct—and that it is manmade—it’s still a theory.

He said those who say climate change is manmade are relying  “on a theory and presenting it as truth, and it’s not yet proven as truth.”

He was asked if he had any parting words for La Mesans, who move out of his Assembly district in 2012.

“The good news is that Marty Block is vacating his seat and moving into the Senate, so Marty Block won’t be able to fail them,” he said, evoking the critical language Democrat Block recently used against Jones at a Grossmont College forum.

“I love La Mesa. I lived in La Mesa when I was going to San Diego State,” he said. “I love going to The Village up there, and the people in La Mesa are fantastic people. I feel they’re a part of this district; they’re a part of East County. So I’m going to miss representing that area.

“But I’m still going to go to La Mesa … and still have friendships with La Mesans. And I’m helping to find them a good representative right now to run for that seat.”

Jones commented on the recent reshaping of district boundaries, saying: “Of all the 80 [Assembly] districts, and the changes, mine is probably in the Top 5 of making the most sense. … for me to have all the mountain areas together with the East County. So I’m excited about it. I’m looking forward to representing the new areas, and it’s going to fit in well with my current area.”

Although he finished a distant second [72 percent to 16.3 percent] to Duncan D. Hunter in the June 2008 GOP primary, Jones has no plans to run for Congress in 2012.

“The three Republican congressmen we have now [in the county] are all doing a great job,” Jones said. “And the two Democrats we have are not in areas that I could [enter]. … My wife doesn’t want to move … and I don’t want to move. And I wouldn’t move just to run for Congress.”

He says his current political plans are “focused on building the Republican membership in the Assembly, so we could get more seats. We’re at 28. My goal in 2012 is to get to 32, at least.”

After he is termed out of office, he said, “I’m perfectly happy to go back to San Diego and go back into the private sector where I came from—and stay home.”