One of the ironies of our brave new global economy is that nation-state borders prevent movement of people, but not corporations or goods. So what happens when the product of a corporation is people? Surprise! The corporation takes precedence.

That's one way to read a bizarre new proposal from the state of Arizona to ship its prisoners to Mexico, where they can be incarcerated more cheaply (and tortured more freely). The other, of course, is that far-right Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, who's pus hing the proposal, would just as soon turn prisoners into lampshades or complimentary hotel soap if there were a market demand for it.

Two private prison companies--one from New Mexico, the other from Florida--have responded to calls from the state for feasibility studies on the scheme. Says Symington's chief of staff, one Jay Heiler, "We have a lot of rural communities around Arizona th at compete for prison projects. So it is not as if we are trying to send some kind of ugly industry south of the border."

Setting aside the question of why Symington isn't trying to promote that valuable industry for the rural communities of his own state instead, Heiler is wrong. It is an ugly industry. The for-profit prison industry has mushroomed in recent years, a nd with it all sorts of concerns about companies that skimp on expenses like food, access to exercise or medical care, libraries, educational programs, adequately trained or compensated employees, and so forth so as to increase profits. Better to keep 'em all locked in tiny metal cages 24 hours a day. (The ones that die eat less.) The public seems to like it, too.

Of course, laws nominally prohibit that sort of thing--but not in Mexico, a notoriously corrupt one-party state where the criminals are generally running the prisons as a way to extort the poor, or simply torture them for the pleasure of it. One ca n see why U.S. prison officials would be intrigued. The near-impossibility of inmate access to defense lawyers or media--or even functional telephones--also has to be appealing.

Correctional Services Corp., the Sarasota company that submitted one of the proposals, estimates it can run a prison in Sonora, the Mexican state bordering Arizona, for half the cost of one on the U.S. side. Where are the savings? Well, salaries, of cours e; just like any other sweatshop. Also food, health care, insurance, lawsuits, and all those other annoying expenses that crop up in the warehousing of product--er, prisoners.

The arrangement would require a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Mexico. Given the money-buys-anything nature of the Clinton Administration, and the propensity of Mexico City's despots to do whatever D.C. and Wall Street ask, it's not nearly as formidible a hurdle as it should be.

And it does make a certain amount of sense. Recently, corporations that took advantage of NAFTA to move factories to Mexico have moved them back to the U.S. to take advantage of even lower wages available through contracted prison labor. Now com bine the concepts of sweatshops and prison slave labor. Just think of how little they'd have to pay in Mexico. The mind boggles. And the ability of the modern corporate state and prison-industrial complex to rationalize virtually any atrocity continue s to deepen in alarming new ways.