I claim no expertise on government shutdowns, immigration policy and enforcement or political negotiating, but I do know something about walls.

I spent the first half of 2007 behind one.

OK. It wasn’t an actual wall. It was a fence. Actually it was two 30-foot fences topped with razor wire, but it served the same purpose. Since midnight Dec. 23, our federal government has been in a state of partial shutdown over the issue of a southern wall across the U.S./Mexico border.

Since the shutdown started, what form the wall would take has been a subject of conjecture. It could be a traditional wall. It could more closely resemble a fence. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham even said the wall was a metaphor for the need for increased border security.

The wall that I spent six months behind certainly was no metaphor.

It was designed for one specific purpose: To keep me inside it and, to a lesser degree, others stuff out.

The wall complex at Florence West Prison achieved the first role, if not the second. For a price, an inmate could get pretty much anything he wanted — drugs and cellphones being the most popular items.

So walls do work — sort of.

The Arizona Department of Corrections, along with every other place that has jails and prisons, understands this.

It is not simply a matter of erecting a wall and calling it a day.

Throughout history, the success of any wall has far less to do with its features than who was on top of it and what deterrents they had at their disposal.

Left unattended, a wall is little more than a nuisance, especially in remote, unpopulated areas, of which there are hundreds of miles across our southern border. Given time and the right circumstances, motivated people can be quite resourceful.

Prison officials, if not the President, know this, of course. That’s why every jail or prison uses surveillance equipment and manpower to monitor activity around the wall. Over time, the stuff needed to keep folks on the proper side of a wall costs more than the wall itself.

Without those precautions, building a wall is pretty much an exercise in futility.

There has yet to be a wall constructed that people haven’t climbed over, under or around.

Ask France.

In the 1930s, the French erected what was known as the Maginot Line, a series of fortifications, obstacles and defense intended to prevent a German invasion.

What the French didn’t commit was the manpower necessary to make all those fortifications, obstacles and defenses effective. The Germans swept through, over and around the Maginot Line with almost comical ease and France quickly fell.

Likewise, the walls currently cited as examples of effectiveness — most notably in Israel — have succeeded largely because they were well-manned and monitored.

To achieve that along our Southern border would require thousands of personnel and hundreds of billions of dollars. In fact, the actual wall would be a very small expense compared to the cost of the resources needed to insure its function.

Of all the ideas floating around to ensure the integrity of our Southern Border, a wall is the most expensive, least efficient choice. Reasonable people should understand this.

The logistics of creating an impenetrable 2,000-mile long wall/fence along the border is America’s Maginot Line. It’s a delusion.

We should know better.

There is certainly a better way and most definitely a less costly way.

It is also certain that shutting down the government for the sake of a wall is something no one should believe is a suitable sacrifice.

I do favor a metaphorical wall, though.

It’s cheaper and offers a far better alternative — increasing border funding for methods that actually have been proven to work.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

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