Missouri National Guard Proposes Prison Inmates to Assist in Emergencies

I guess in Missouri, someone is going to have to show the National Guard and the governor why allowing prisoners to assist in emergencies may be a bad idea. The Associated Press writes the Missouri National Guard is considering the use of prisoners throughout the state to assist the guards mission of providing aid to the state during trying times if needed. The Associated Press writes:

The Missouri National Guard plans to start training some of the state’s prison inmates to help it during natural disasters and other emergencies...

“Inmates would become a more formalized part of the Guard’s disaster response.” Missouri Guard Maj. Tammy Spicer “said it would give the Guard a larger and better trained pool of workers to respond to emergencies.”

The state claims that it used inmates during the floods of 2008 to help pile sandbags to slow down flooding without any incident. Ok, but things in Missouri can become California chaotic in a very short time and need may outweigh common sense if the big one was ever to quake at the New Madrid fault. The last major earthquake to occur in Missouri was felt as far away as New York and it reversed the flow of the Mississippi River for days. So what are the conditions of asking prisoners to assist?

Supposedly there would be no violent offenders pulled out of prison, but how could Missourians actually be sure of that? I mean if things got bad, and there is a very real possibility it could considering the awesome power of the earthquake fault in Missouri, could there be a chance someone would put need before safety?

Surely the people of Missouri would be likely to assist in an earthquake without the need to have to patrol prisoners and eat up valuable resources that it would take to safely secure the prisoners in a chaotic scenario. A flood is one thing, but something as big as the New Madrid fault could just be asking for trouble by releasing prisoners to assist.