Category Archives: CCA

Judge rules against Florida prison privatization

Judge Jackie Fulford ruled yesterday for the Second Circuit Court of Florida
that the prison privatization plan the Florida legislature added to the state budget is unconstitutional on a key point of all prison privatization schemes. Her ruling agreed with the Florida Police Benevolent Association, which is a union of correctional workers.

Judge rules prison privatization plan unconstitutional Dara Kam wrote for Post on Politics yesterday, Judge Rules Florida Prison Privatization Unconstitutional,

The privatization of 29 prisons in the southern portion of the state from Manatee County to Indian River County to the Florida Keys should have been mandated in a separate bill and not in proviso language in the budget, as lawmakers did in the must-pass budget approved in May and signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott, Fulford ruled.

“This Court concludes that if it is the will of the Legislature to itself initiate privatization of Florida prisons, as opposed to DOC, the Legislature must do so by general law, rather than ‘using the hidden recesses of the General Appropriations Act,’” Fulford wrote in her order issued Friday morning.

The order doesn’t say Florida can’t privatize prisons, rather that it can’t do it by hiding it in the budget process. But alleged budget savings are the only reason privatization backers are willing to admit to, so that’s no small matter.

And if prison privatization is such a money-saver, why did the prison companies’ cronies in the statehouse try to do it like this: Continue reading →

$1 of 17 GA tax dollars spent on prisons

Carrie Teegardin wrote for the AJC 4 April 2010, Georgia prison population, costs on rise
Georgia operates the fifth-largest prison system in the nation, at a cost of $1 billion a year. The job of overseeing 60,000 inmates and 150,000 felons on probation consumes 1 of every 17 state dollars.
Above owed to Farrah D. Reed, who also commented on Gov. Deal: the bad, prison slave labor competing with free labor:
Maybe if our tax dollars were spent on education and rehabilitation we wouldn’t have so many folks locked up in the first place!

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Calderón contra la Guerra de las Drogas?

Juan Carlos Hidalgo wrote for Cato 20 September 2011, Calderón Hints at Drug Legalization Again,
Mexican President Felipe Calderón seems to be experiencing a dramatic change of mind regarding his war against drug cartels. Soon after a drug gang set fire to a casino in Monterrey a few weeks ago killing 52 people, Calderón told the media that ”If [the Americans] are determined and resigned to consuming drugs, they should look for market alternatives that annul the stratospheric profits of the criminals, or establish clear points of access that are not the border with Mexico.” Many people interpreted that as a veiled reference to drug legalization.
The referenced story by Julian Miglierini 1 September 2011 for BBC News also said the Mexican president went farther: Monterrey attack: Game-changer in Mexico’s drugs war?
Hours after it took place, the president described it “as an abhorrent act of terror and savagery” and later said the authors were “true terrorists”.
When you think about the billions or trillions the U.S. and other countries spend against terrorists who cause less damage than the Mexican drug cartels, he could be indicating that priorities are misdirected.

The Cato article says Calderón has now gone further: Continue reading →

Gov. Deal: the bad, prison slave labor competing with free labor

Gov. Nathan Deal said he was for free-enterprise chickens, but he wants the government to supply prison slave labor to grow them.

Continuing Gov. Deal: the good, the ugly, and the bad on prisons, quoting again from David Rodock’s interview with Gov. Nathan Deal in today’s VDT.

The Bad

Remember Gov. Deal mentioned poultry operators as an illustration of his bogus point that government intervention is always bad? Well, I guess he forgot that when he answered this question:
THE TIMES: Your proposal to have probationers replace illegal immigrants for farm labor. Did that idea work? If it didn’t or it did, what’s going to happen next year during the picking season?

DEAL: “Well, it worked with some success. I think there was a great deal of skepticism about it on whether these people will work and there is a threat associated with their presence. We have to remember that probationers are not under arrest. They are free in our society.

Really? Except for little things like not being able to vote if they are felons, and having to pay their probation officers. But back to the Gov.: Continue reading →

What about Phil Kent? — Kathryn Grant to Gov. Deal @ VSU 16 Sep 2011

VSU student Kathryn Grant asked Gov. Nathan Deal about his Immigration Enforcement Review Board appointee Phil Kent. The governor responded at length.

Here’s the video:


What about Phil Kent? — Kathryn Grant to Gov. Deal @ VSU 16 Sep 2011
Student protesters,
Press Conference, Gov. Nathan Deal (VSU),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 16 September 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

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If public prisons are bad, what about private prisons?

If the VDT can’t get a public prison already in Lowndes County to comply with Georgia’s quite strong open records law even with years of requests, why would we want a private prison in Lowndes County, which wouldn’t have any open records requirements at all?

Dean Poling and Kay Harris wrote a long article about weapons in prisons for the VDT 28 August 2011, An eye for an eye: Life behind bars, concluding:

Inmates are intelligent. All they have is time. Why? Because there is no rehabilitation anymore. They are merely being housed. The prison programs don’t work, especially for lifers with nothing else to lose. So they have plenty of time to figure out ways to beat the system.
The VDT has been trying to find out more since at least 2009, when Malynda Fulton wrote 9 November 2009, Department of Corrections says records are ‘state secrets’ or destroyed, Continue reading →

CCA really doesn’t like community opposition, so apparently it works

Private prison company CCA, which in conjunction with ALEC promotes laws in dozens of states and nationally that lock up more people for CCA’s private profit at taxpayer expense, really doesn’t like community opposition to siting private prisons in their communities. Hm, why would CCA hate community opposition so much, unless it works?

Not quite rolling his eyes when she mentions visiting communities, CCA’s video pair disparage community opposition to private prisons on their own web page, When Corrections Meets Communities:

Question: There are Web sites and blogs that are adamantly opposed to your company and industry, and they provide negative information about you. Why?
Hm, you mean like some of the material on this blog?
Answer: CCA and all corrections companies recognize the ongoing efforts of local, loosely formed grassroots groups and national, well-funded associations that jointly oppose the establishment of partnership prisons, many for self-serving reasons. Such groups go to great lengths to attack, criticize and misrepresent the entire industry. They make false allegations and often rely on hearsay and unreliable sources. Regrettably, these biased groups often resort to misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric to turn isolated incidents into broad generalizations about the corrections industry as a whole.
Well-funded? Har! OK, not this blog. That plus we provide evidence, like Continue reading →

“We may face community opposition to facility location” —CCA

Look who cares about community opposition!

In CCA’s 2010 Annual Report to the SEC:

We may face community opposition to facility location, which may adversely affect our ability to obtain new contracts. Our success in obtaining new awards and contracts sometimes depends, in part, upon our ability to locate land that can be leased or acquired, on economically favorable terms, by us or other entities working with us in conjunction with our proposal to construct and/or manage a facility. Some locations may be in or near populous areas and, therefore, may generate legal action or other forms of opposition from residents in areas surrounding a proposed site. When we select the intended project site, we attempt to conduct business in communities where local leaders and residents generally support the establishment of a privatized correctional or detention facility. Future efforts to find suitable host communities may not be successful. We may incur substantial costs in evaluating the feasibility of the development of a correctional or detention facility. As a result, we may report significant charges if we decide to abandon efforts to develop a correctional or detention facility on a particular site. In many cases, the site selection is made by the contracting governmental entity. In such cases, site selection may be made for reasons related to political and/or economic development interests and may lead to the selection of sites that have less favorable environments.
CCA doesn’t like community opposition, because it reduces CCA’s ability to site prisons, which adversely affects their bottom line. Funny how that happens because a private prison company’s main goal is profit, not rehabilitation, public safety, or justice.

We don’t have to accept a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. If we tell the Industrial Authority and CCA no, CCA will probably go away.

And the more communities that tell CCA no, the less profitable they will be.

-jsq

Time to divest from private prison companies

It’s time to stop private prison profiteering by refusing to take their profit: divest private prison company stock from personal, pension, and church funds.

There’s no need to speculate that private prison companies have incentive to keep more people locked up: CCA says so. Kanya D’Almeida wrote for IPS 24 August 2011, ‘Profiteers of Misery’: The U.S. Private Prison Industrial Complex:

CCA’s 2010 annual report states categorically that, “The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws — for instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.”

CCA continues, “Legislation has been proposed in numerous jurisdictions that could lower minimum sentences for some non-violent crimes and make more inmates eligible for early release based on good behaviour, (while) sentencing alternatives under consideration could put some offenders on probation who would otherwise be incarcerated. Similarly, reductions in crime rates or resources dedicated to prevent and enforce crime could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities.”

What’s this got to do with Georgia? Continue reading →

NAACP on MLK on War on Drugs

I hate to repeat a preacher, but it’s Sunday, and Robert Rooks wrote for NAACP 24 August 2011 U.S. Approach to War on Drugs Ignores Dr. King’s Lessons on Justice, Compassion.
After forty years of the war on drugs, America continues to have laws that stratify society based on race and class and continues to ignore Dr. King’s lessons on justice, compassion and love.

My favorite quote from Dr. King speaks to the heart of the problem with America’s criminal justice system. “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

America’s criminal justice system is reckless and discriminate. America has five percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Blacks are incarcerated at four to five times the rate of whites for drug crimes, even though the majority of those who use and sell drugs are white. The majority of those incarcerated are people who have a history with mental health and substance abuse.

Not only does incarceration impact individuals but it undermines families,

Continue reading →