Category Archives: CCA

Sentence reform in Georgia?

AP wrote 22 April 2011, Deal signs measure creating sentence reform panel:
Gov. Nathan Deal signed legislation Friday [House Bill 265] that would create a panel to study Georgia’s criminal justice system with an eye toward overhauling the state’s tough sentencing laws.

The laws have left the state with overcrowded prisons and taxpayers with an annual corrections bill that tops $1 million.

The legislation creates a 13-member commission that would study sentencing reforms in hopes of offering alternative sentences for some drug addicts and other nonviolent offenders. The panel would have to report its findings by early 2012, in time for lawmakers to act on them in the next legislative session.

That annual bill has to be more than $1 million; maybe $1 billion.

Anyway, Georgia seems to be discovering what Texas already did some years ago: we can’t afford to lock up so many people.

The high incarceration rate comes with high costs. Georgia pays $3,800 each year to educate a child in public schools, and $18,000 every year to keep each inmate behind bars, Deal said.

What will we do with them instead?

Hall County is one of several counties that have adopted drug courts, which aim to provide alternative sentences for low-level drug offenders. At the ceremony, drug court graduation Mike Wilcoxson said the program changed his life.

“One thing drug court has done for me is give me a sense of purpose in my life, to set goals for myself, to be accountable for my actions, and to break the cycle of addiction I had,” Wilcoxson said.

That’s one solution.

And if we’re not going to lock up so many people, why do we need to build a private prison in Lowndes County?

-jsq

FBI investigating CCA “Gladiator School”

Rebecca Boone wrote for AP, 30 November 2010 that Video release prompts FBI prison investigation: Critics claim the privately run Idaho Correctional Center uses inmate-on-inmate violence

Jessie L. Bonner / AP file


Former inmate Hanni Elabed is shown during a July 26 interview in Boise, Idaho. Elabed suffered brain damage and persistent short-term memory loss after he was beaten by another inmate while multiple guards watched at the Idaho prison operated by Corrections Corporation of America.

The surveillance video from the overhead cameras shows Hanni Elabed being beaten by a fellow inmate in an Idaho prison, managing to bang on a prison guard station window, pleading for help. Behind the glass, correctional officers look on, but no one intervenes when Elabed is knocked unconscious.

No one steps into the cellblock when the attacker sits down to rest, and no one stops him when he resumes the beating.

Videos of the attack obtained by The Associated Press show officers watching the beating for several minutes. The footage is a key piece of evidence for critics who claim the privately run Idaho Correctional Center uses inmate-on-inmate violence to force prisoners to snitch on their cellmates or risk being moved to extremely violent units.

On Tuesday, hours after the AP published the video, the top federal prosecutor in Idaho told the AP that the FBI has been investigating whether guards violated the civil rights of inmates at the prison, which is run by the Corrections Corporation of America.

What is the inmates’ nickname for this CCA-run prison? Gladiator school.

There is a lot more in the article.

-jsq

Local NAACP votes to oppose private prison in Lowndes County

Leigh Touchton commented yesterday about a meeting Tuesday 19 April. She is president of the Valdosta-Lowndes NAACP. -jsq
Valdosta NAACP branch voted last night to oppose the private prison approved by VLCIA. We don’t need more prisons, and they do not improve economic standards in any community in which they have been located. There is a safety burden upon the community, there are human rights abuses, and the focus should be on saving the state money by rehabilitation of non-violent offenders rather than mass incarceration. When America has 5% of the world’s population but incarcerates 25% of the world’s prisoners, this is unacceptable. In North Carolina, private prisons have put local furniture manufacturers out of business because they cannot compete with the prison’s slave labor. These are not sustainable and it’s no mystery why most of the large Christian denominations in America oppose them.

-Leigh Touchton

Here’s Brad Lofton’s explanation of the private prison. Here are statements on private prisons by three Christian denominations. And the state of Israel has outlawed private prisons. More information about CCA and private prisons here.

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Prison conditions lawsuit against CCA revived

Sheila Burke writes for AP that Appeals court revives lawsuit over dirty TN inmate:
A federal appeals court is allowing a lawsuit to go forward that claims that an inmate at a privately run Nashville jail was denied mental health treatment and did not shower or leave his cell for nine months.

Mary Braswell sued Corrections Corporation of America in 2008, accusing the prison operator of treating her grandson inhumanely and violating his constitutional rights.

She claimed that Frank Horton was mentally ill and deteriorated severely while he was locked up for a non-violent probation violation.

But hey, CCA’s stock is up!

-jsq

Why Georgia wants to build private prisons

Jake Armstrong wrote 4 Dec 2008 in the Florida Times-Union that Private prisons trump Georgia’s: DOC says incarceration is cheaper when done by private companies. Really? How much cheaper?
Private companies can build prisons faster and operate them for slightly less than the state, said Michael Nail, deputy director of the department’s corrections division.
Slightly cheaper. Which we already learned is by having fewer guards per prisoner. Risking public safety for small dollar savings: does that sound like a good idea to you?.

How much cheaper? Continue reading →

Former CCA employee is Ohio prison chief in while state is selling off prisons

Joe Gullen writes in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 21 March 2011, that Private corrections company with ties to government officials will not get special treatment while Ohio sells five prisons, director says
A private corrections company with ties to both the governor’s office and the corrections department will get no special treatment as Ohio moves to privatize a chunk of its prison system, the corrections department director said Monday.

Gary Mohr, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, has pledged to remove himself from Gov. John Kasich’s recent proposal to sell five Ohio prisons to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Mohr is a former consultant and managing director for Corrections Corporation of America, a Nashville-based company that is eligible to bid on the state prison contracts once they are made available next month.

The company, which bills itself the leading private-sector provider of corrections services to governments, also hired Kasich’s former congressional chief of staff, Donald Thibaut, as a lobbyist in January.

Oh, my, how would any of that produce an appearance of conflict of interest?
As for hiring Kasich’s former congressional chief of staff as a lobbyist, Owen said CCA has long had a lobbyist in Ohio to educate elected officials on the services the company provides. CCA owns and operates a Youngstown facility that houses federal prisoners.

“There’s nothing hidden and no agenda,” Owen said.

Well, in that case, CCA should have no objection to finding out, for example, who they had lobbying the Georgia legislature lately.

-jsq

One of the ways we save money is not build new prisons —Grover Norquist

On the Alyona Show, Grover Norquist: Prison Reform NOW:
A long prison sentence might be justified, but it also might be very expensive, and maybe it’s not the best way to deal with people with drug problems.

…

People do want to know that violent criminals are locked up for a good length of time. They’re not particularly interested in locking up in prison for $20,000 a year or in some places in California, $50,000 a year…. It’s not free to put someone in prison.

He even recommends trying rehabilitation and drug treatment.

Texas is the state that’s moved out there, done some very serious analysis.
Drug rehabilitiation, lower recidivism, lower costs.

In Lowndes County, Georgia, we have two hospitals, a drug treatment center, and many doctors and nurses. What if we invested in them instead of in a money-losing private prison?

-jsq

To the Armed Forces of Mexico —Javier Sicilia

50,000 people marched in Cuernavaca 6 April 2011 to the gates of a military base, where the usual military guards were nowhere to be seen. Then a poet, whose son had recently been killed by the drug war, climbed up and said:
To the Armed Forces of Mexico
You have always been the custodians of peace for our nation
That’s why we never want to see you again,
outside of your barracks,
except to defend us from foreign invasion,
or to help us, as you always have, during natural disasters.

What does this have to do with us? We don’t need a private prison; we need an end to the War on Drugs that fills our prisons with more prisoners total and per capita than any other nation on earth.

Todos somos Sicilia.

-jsq

No mas Guerra de las Drogas

The war on drugs is not a metaphor in Mexico: for four years the Mexican Army has fought drug traffickers in the streets. With no success and 40,000 dead, many of them collateral damage. The people have had it with that: No mas Guerra de las Drogas!

Al Giordano wrote 7 April 2011, And This Is What History Looks Like in Mexico

Yesterday, multitudes took to the streets in more than 40 Mexican cities – and in protests by Mexicans and their friends at consulates and embassies in Europe, North America and South America – to demand an end to the violence wrought by the US-imposed “war on drugs.”

What? You haven’t heard about this? Or if you have heard something about it, did you know that it is the biggest news story in the Mexican media, on the front page of virtually every daily newspaper in the country?

A sea change has occurred in Mexican public opinion. The people have turned definitively against the use of the Mexican Army to combat against drug traffickers. The cry from every city square yesterday was for the Army to return to its barracks and go back to doing the job it was formed to do; protect Mexico from foreign invasion and provide human aid relief in case of natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes. Since President Felipe Calderón unleashed the Armed Forces, four years ago, to combat drug trafficking organizations, the violence between it and the competing narco organizations has led to a daily body count, widespread human rights abuses against civilians, and more than 40,000 deaths, so many of them of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire and used by all sides in the armed conflict that still has no winners, that never will have any winner.

What woke up the people of Mexico, or, rather, who? Continue reading →

Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate —NAACP

What can get Grover Norquist and the President of the NAACP on the same stage? A new report from NAACP:
Misplaced Priorities tracks the steady shift of state funds away from education and toward the criminal justice system. Researchers have found that over-incarceration most often impacts vulnerable and minority populations, and that it destabilizes communities.
And this is not just finger-pointing; it includes pointers on how to get out of this mess:
The report is part of the NAACP’s “Smart and Safe Campaign,” and offers a set of recommendations that will help policymakers in all 50 states downsize prison populations and shift the savings to education budgets.
Short version: Continue reading →