Cite as: 533 U. S. 146 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
State's rehabilitation programs. By contrast, returning the prisoner prior to trial—in violation of Article IV(e)—would permit the prisoner to participate in the sending State's program for some of those days. But to call such a violation "technical," because it means fewer days spent away from the sending State, is to call virtually every conceivable anti-shuttling violation "technical"—a circumstance which, like the 13th chime of the clock, shows that Alabama's conception of the provision's purpose is seriously flawed.
Article IV(e) may seek to remove obstructions to prisoner rehabilitation in a different way. The Agreement not only prevents "return," but it also requires the receiving State to pay for the prisoner's incarceration in that State during the period prior to trial. Art. V(h) ("From the time that a party State receives custody of a prisoner pursuant to this agreement until such prisoner is returned to the territory and custody of the sending State, the [receiving] State . . . shall be responsible for the prisoner and shall also pay all costs of transporting, caring for, keeping, and returning the prisoner"). That requirement may provide the receiving State with an incentive to shorten the pretrial period—to proceed to trial faster than 120 days or not to seek extensions—thus disposing of detainers, and the attendant "uncertainties which obstruct programs of prisoner treatment and rehabilitation," in the most "expeditious" manner. Art. I. See also Cuyler, 449 U. S., at 449 (discussing negative effects of detainers on prisoners). But if that is Article IV(e)'s purpose, the transfer here was inconsistent with it. By returning Bozeman to federal prison, the county saved itself the cost of housing him—and for a nontrivial several week period, which may have allowed it to delay resolving the detainer.
Alternatively, the Agreement's drafters may have thought that the "shuttling" itself, i. e., the movement back and forth among prisons, adds to the "uncertainties which obstruct programs of prisoner treatment and rehabilitation." Art. I
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