Long-term island accomodations available…

… one minor detail:

Newcomers to this stunning Pacific island won’t get an umbrella drink or the keys to an open-air Jeep for sightseeing. Instead, they’re more likely to be handed a shovel, a list of rules and a housing assignment – with few early checkouts.

This island paradise – about 70 miles off the coast of Nayarit, between Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlán – is no resort. It’s a minimum-security prison where inmates, called “colonists,” are expected to work hard, be at roll call daily and stay out of trouble.

Tres Marias was scheduled for closure a few years ago (to be turned into a bird sanctuary… jail bird to birds… hmmm, gotta be something tthere I could use).  But, prison overcrowding and the Mexican recognition that housing non-violent offenders with violent criminals defeats the whole purpose of “Centers of Social Readaption (the rather nice bureaucratic euphemism used in Mexico).  So, unlike backwards places (oh, like Texas), Mexican prisons actually do try to rehabilitate people, not just lock ’em up.  Alas, like everywhere else, prisoners are too often just locked up.

“Retro” Tres Marias (the last in a notorious line of island prisons in the Americas, including Devil’s Island and Alcatraz) became something of a model prison over the last couple of years.  The prisoners — and their families — want the place to stay open:

Slated for closure a few years ago, the colony is being repopulated thanks, in part, to a testimonial video.

In it, colonists encourage prisoners around the country – with the exception of violent offenders, rapists and child molesters – to consider the island environment.

Prisoners on the island are not crammed six to a cell, and they’re not subject to abuse by prison gangs or shakedowns by guards or exposed to the constant temptation of readily available drugs.

During free time, colonists can roam on their bikes, shop and visit with their families, who are encouraged to move onto the island.

Roberto Castañeda Bravo, 49, and one of those on the video, arrived here three months ago from a federal prison in Los Mochis, Sinaloa. He was convicted of transporting drugs, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years.

“It’s so different here. When you can move freely, it changes you. It gives you your life back,” said Mr. Castañeda as he painted an open-air reception room last week a few yards from the deep blue sea. “There are dangerous people here, but they change 100 percent when they are given some freedom.”

Several hundred new colonists have been recruited through the video. As new housing is built on the island, the population is expected to rise from the current 1,066 inmates (plus 275 noninmate relatives and 100 employees) to more than 5,000 inmates in 2012.

Inmates work in agriculture, ranching, carpentry and construction. They are divided into 11 “encampments” around the island, which is 14 miles long and 8 miles wide. The proposed narco island on María Magdalena is about half that size. The third island in the chain, María Cleofas, is tiny and largely uninhabitable.

The 150 children on the island attend one of three schools on María Madre – from kindergarten to middle school. At age 14, they must go back to the mainland to live with relatives or in orphanages.

The island’s baker, an inmate who gave his name as Manuel, said he married his wife in a church ceremony here, and she lives with him in modest housing with their newborn baby.

“Me, personally, I’m very happy here with my wife, with my family,” he said, adding that “love convinced her” to move to the penal colony.

Families like Manuel’s get groceries, up to $280 a month from relatives for purchases on the island, and are allowed to run small businesses.

“It’s cool here,” said Phillip Smith, 42, of Tennessee, one of two Americans on the island. “You work three or four hours and then you have some time for yourself.”

Maria Madre did, at one time, have female convicts (or “colonists”).  Back when the colony was for “maximum security” inmates, there wasn’t any other place to lock up women like  Madre Conchita, the 1920s terrorist leader (and nun) or Lola la Chata, the illiterate Tepito street vendor who master-minded (mistress-minded?) heroin smuggling to the U.S. back in the late 1940s.

I don’t know of any female colonists today, though mothers, wives, girlfriends and children come to stay  in the colony (one original reason for closing it was the cost of keeping teachers on the Island.

But, there’s trouble in penal paradise… Federal authorities are looking to build a “new, improved” second facility on smaller Maria Magdelena as a maximum security “narco prison”   The thinking is that the “narcos” will be locked up with only limited access to their lawyers (ok, so their lawyers often act as their go-betweens to the outside world … still, there’s something a little creepy about seeing limited access as a positive step) and be — out of sight, out of mind — of the rest of Mexico.

And, with the U.S. pressuring Mexico to extradite these guys on some — any — charge, a Mexican “Gitmo” is in the works.  I don’t THINK Mexico is going to contract out the prison to Corrections Corporation of America, though with funding in part by what’s NOT being called “Plan Mexico”, there’s U.S. taxpayer money involved, which is an open invitation to those REAL criminals. It crosses my mind that the super narco island isn’t really needed, but that the funding is there, and bureaucrats are just acting like… well… bureaucrats.  If we spend it, they will come.

Since there has to be prisons for non-violent offenders, I hope someone looks out for their welfare, and protects them from the crooks on the next island.   Maybe they can surround the place with time-share salesmen… sharks are passive and cuddly by comparison.