A plan to ship California prisoners to Michigan fell apart yesterday when the costs were much higher than what California is paying elsewhere, the Detroit News reports. Corrections officials in California, facing its own multibillion-dollar budget crisis, said a preliminary cost estimate from Michigan of $89 per inmate a day, not including medical costs, was about $26 more than they pay to house prisoners in other states. The lower cost includes health care, said Seth Unger of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Michigan pays $90 a day to house maximum security prisoners one to a cell at Standish Maximum Correctional Facility. If Michigan were to double-bunk prisoners, the rate would have been closer to the $59.85 a day Michigan pays to double-bunk medium security prisoners at Muskegon Correctional Facility. Michigan had offered to house California’s inmates in two soon-to-be-closed prisons in Standish and Muskegon. The prisons are to be closed under a belt-tightening plan to close a nearly $1.8 billion deficit.