Correcting a prison problem

Ohio's two U.S. senators and Gov. Bob Taft may have come up with as good a solution as it gets for Youngstown's problem-plagued private prison: Sell it to the federal government, which is in obvious need of more prison cells.
That is not to say that Youngstown Mayor George McKelvey shouldn't continue to work with the Corrections Corporation of America, the Nashville, Tenn., owner of Northeast Ohio Correctional Center, toward assuring future use of the prison on Youngstown-Hubbard Road. If McKelvey and CCA can arrive at an agreement that will allow CCA to bring a new group of medium security prisoners to the facility with a minimum of disruption to NOCC's operations and its employees' lives, that would be fine.
Good points: But Sens. Mike DeWine and George Voinovich, along with Taft, made a several excellent points in suggesting to the federal government that it investigate the purchase of the prison.
President George W. Bush intends to build 11 new federal prisons. NOCC could be purchased for less and brought into operation more quickly than any new construction project.
Stable federal jobs would certainly benefit the area, and it would seem to us that a large percentage of the personnel who have already been trained to work at NOCC would be excellent employment prospects for the federal bureau of prisons.
There would, of course, be an inevitable temporary disruption in the lives of those employees, since it would be impossible to make a seamless transition from private status to a federal penitentiary.
But there is no denying the need for federal prison beds. In today's news pages there's a story about alleged overcrowding of the Federal Correctional Institution in Elkton in Columbiana County.