Category Archives: Immigration

“I’ve found that Minnesotans do not want their laws written by the lobbyists of big corporations” — MN Gov. Mark Dayton

Remember American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the big corporate lobby group that helps CCA push for private prisons? The one that lobbied 24 states to pass “anti-immigration” laws that create new misdemeanors and felonies to send more customers to CCA prisons? One governor has decided he’s had enough of that.

Zaid Jilani wrote for Republic Report 15 February 2012, Minnesota Governor Calls Out Corporate Front Group ALEC, Vetoes Its Bills

It has grown so powerful that it now has nearly one-third of all state legislators under its umbrella.

ALEC has worked with legislators to pass bills ranging from issues as diverse as stripping unionized workers of their rights to making it harder for low-income citizens to vote. It is usually able to do so because it hands its corporate-written template bills to state legislators and gets them passed without any public scrutiny as to the origin of this legislation.

Late last week, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton (D) decided that corporate front groups like ALEC should not be able to write his state’s laws. Dayton decided to veto a series of “tort reform” bills that would’ve restricted the rights of citizens to sue to hold big corporations responsible. In a press conference discussing his vetoes, Dayton condemned ALEC for providing the templates for the bills. “I’ve found that Minnesotans do not want their laws written by the lobbyists of big corporations,” said Dayton.

Here’s video: Continue reading →

CCA offers to buy prisons from 48 states

Desperation or disaster capitalism by CCA? Trying to get as entrenched as possible before more people catch on that private prisons don’t save money for states?

Andrew Jones wrote for Raw Story yesterday, Private prison company offers to buy 48 states’ prisons

In exchange for keeping at least a 90 percent occupancy rate, the private prison company Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has sent a letter to 48 states offering to manage their prisons for the low price of $250 million per year, according to a letter obtained by the Huffington Post.

The company says it’s a way for states to help manage their current budget crisis. “We believe this comes at a timely and helpful juncture and hope you will share our belief in the benefits of the purchase-and-manage model,” CCA chief corrections officer Harley Lappin said in the letter.

What does CCA want in return?
…a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full….
So if a state, such as Georgia, was thinking of sentencing reform, or of getting on with decriminalizing drugs, either would become quite difficult after signing such contracts.

Here’s CCA’s offer letter, complete with a blank to fill in for the state.

Maybe CCA is realizing that it’s coming to the end of its rope on its old tricks, such as these, pointed out by Chris Kirkham in HufffintongPost yesterday, Continue reading →

the relatives of those people don’t care who is winning (the drug war) —Carlos Fuentes

A writer of fiction tells the truth about the failed war on drugs. We’re way past the beginning and middle of this story: time to end it. Which makes this a very bad time to build a private prison that depends on the war on drugs.

Anita Singh wrote for the Telegraph today, Carlos Fuentes: legalise drugs to save Mexico,

Fuentes, Mexico’s greatest writer and a former diplomat, addressed the contemporary problems of Latin American — in particular, Mexico’s drug problem.

He said: “The drug traffickers are in Mexico, they send the drugs to the US and once they get across the border what happens? We don’t know who consumes them. We can’t prosecute, we can’t defend. It’s a very difficult situation for us Mexicans. The governments of the US and Mexico have to fight drug trafficking together.”

Fuentes believes that decriminalising drugs is the only way to end the violence that in the past five years has claimed nearly 50,000 lives of gang members, security forces and innocent bystanders.

“It is a confrontation. Sometimes we win, sometimes they win. But there are 50,000 killed and the relatives of those people don’t care who is winning.

Nobody is winning except the profiteers in arms and pesticides, such as Monsanto. And even mighty MON is losing to Boliviana negra. Alcohol prohibition produced Al Capone and other gangsters; the failed War on Drugs produced drug gangs and ever more vicious militarization of police forces, right up to the Mexican failed “solution” of calling out the Army into the streets.

We’re all losing through lack of money for education and militarization of our own police. We can’t afford this costly failed experiment. The real solution is the same today as in 1933: legalize, regulate, and tax. That will also drop the U.S. prison population way down, saving a lot of money that can be used for education. It’s going to happen eventually, so building more prisons that will end up being closed is a bad idea.

-jsq

How to end the epidemic of incarceration

There are historical reasons for why we lock up so many people, some going back a century or more, and some starting in 1980 and 2001. Knowing what they are (and what they are not) lets us see what we can do to end the epidemic of incarceration that is damaging education and agriculture in Georgia.

Adam Gopnik wrote for the New Yorker dated 30 January 2012, The Caging of America: Why do we lock up so many people?

More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives. Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today—perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system—in prison, on probation, or on parole—than were in slavery then.
In Georgia, 1 in 13 of all adults is in jail, prison, probation, or parole: highest in the country (1 in 31 nationwide). Georgia is only number 4 in adults in prison, but we’re continuing to lock more people up, so we may get to number 1 on that, too.
Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. That city of the confined and the controlled, Lockuptown, is now the second largest in the United States.

The accelerating rate of incarceration over the past few decades is just as startling as the number of people jailed: in 1980, there were about two hundred and twenty people incarcerated for every hundred thousand Americans; by 2010, the number had more than tripled, to seven hundred and thirty-one. No other country even approaches that. In the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education.

And we can’t afford that, especially not when we’re cutting school budgets. That graph of education vs. incarceration spending is for California. Somebody should do a similar graph for Georgia.

The article does get into why we lock up so many people: Continue reading →

Local state legislative delegation at the Country Club

At the State Legislative Luncheon at the Country Club yesterday, sponsored by the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce, I found it more interesting what the legislators didn’t mention than what they did.

Frequent attendees told me the audience was much larger than in previous years, and one attributed that to the recent school consolidation referendum. Sitting side by side were Chamber Chair Tom Gooding and FVCS President Sam Allen.

Jeff Hanson introduced the legislators. He’s the Chair of the Chamber’s Government Affairs Council (GAC). He said they are seeking more participants. Hm, they have an Energy and Environment Policy Committee that’s chaired by someone from Georgia Power….

Tim Golden announced that the local delegation’s highest priority was to get $32 million for a Health Science Center for VSU. VSU Interim President Dr. Levy was there, as was former president “Dr. Z” as Tim Golden called him.

I was just talking to someone from SGMC in the food line about how it would be nice if the Industrial Authority would promote healthcare industries more. It’s good that the legislators are doing that, although it’s not clear that there are not other things that should be even higher priority.

Tim Golden also wants to remove a sales tax Continue reading →

Private prison profits buying more laws to lock people up

Another report about money and private prisons (in addition to the ACLU’s Banking on Bondage), this one Public Campaign and PICO National Network, Unholy Alliance: How the Private Prison Industry is Corrupting Our Democracy and Promoting Mass Incarceration. It establishes that the “kids for cash” scandal, in which two judges accepted kickbacks in exchange for locking up juveniles, was just the tip of the iceberg.
Yet the reality is that private prison lobbyists regularly buy influence with state and federal officials, not only to win lucrative contracts, but also to change or preserve policies that increase the number of people behind bars. Private companies have made huge profits off the mass incarceration of non-violent drug offenders, and are now turning their attention to increasing the detention of Latino immigrants—the newest profit center for the prison industrial complex. Ultimately there is no way to reverse the costly trend toward mass incarceration without reducing the influence of these companies and their money in our democracy.
Here’s another example David Donnelly wrote for Huffpo 17 Nov 2011, Private Prisons Industry: Increasing Incarcerations, Maximizing Profits and Corrupting Our Democracy,
Earlier this year in Louisiana, a plan by Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) to privatize prisons narrowly failed in a legislative committee by a vote of 13 to 12. The 12 members of the House Appropriations Committee who voted to approve the prison privatization plan have received more than three times more money from private prison donors than the 13 members who voted against the plan, according to an analysis of data from the Louisiana Ethics Administration and the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Gov. Jindal himself has taken nearly $30,000 from the private prison industry.
And of course in Georgia there’s HB 87, which isn’t really about excluding immigrants; Continue reading →

The private prison game: Banking on Bondage

Rania Khalek wrote for AlterNet 29 November 2011, The Shocking Ways the Corporate Prison Industry Games the System
Just a decade ago, private prisons were a dying industry awash in corruption and mired in lawsuits, particularly Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison operator. Today, these companies are booming once again, yet the lawsuits and scandals continue to pile up. Meanwhile, more and more evidence shows that compared to publicly run prisons, private jails are filthier, more violent, less accountable, and contrary to what privatization advocates peddle as truth, do not save money. In fact, more recent findings suggest that private prisons could be more costly.

So why are they still in business?

In a recently published report, “Banking on Bondage: Mass Incarceration and Private Prisons,” the American Civil Liberties Union examines the history of prison privatization and finds that private prison companies owe their continued and prosperous existence to skyrocketing immigration detention post September 11 as well as the firm hold they have gained over elected and appointed officials.

We’d already heard from Bloomberg that Continue reading →

CCA charges inmates five days’ pay for one telephone minute

That’s $1 a day in pay and $5 a telephone minute. While CCA is collecting as much as $200 a day per inmate in your tax dollars and CCA’s CEO is compensated $3,266,387 from your tax dollars.

Amanda Peterson Beadle wrote for ThinkProgress 16 November 2011, Private Prison Charges Inmates $5 a Minute for Phone Calls While They Work for $1 a Day

Last year the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison company, received $74 million of taxpayers’ money to run immigration detention centers. Georgia, receives $200 a night for each of the 2,000 detainees it holds, and rakes in yearly profits between $35 million and $50 million.

Prisoners held in this remote facility depend on the prison’s phones to communicate with their lawyers and loved ones. Exploiting inmates’ need, CCA charges detainees here $5 per minute to make phone calls. Yet the prison only pays inmates who work at the facility $1 a day. At that rate, it would take five days to pay for just one minute.

They charge for food, too.

And remember, CCA profits from anti-immigration laws, at taxpayer expense:

Recent anti-immigration laws in Alabama (HB56) and Georgia (HB87) guarantee that neighbor facilities will have an influx of “product.” In the past few years, CCA has spent $14.8 million lobbying for anti-immigration laws to ensure they have continuous access to fresh inmates and keep their money racket going. In 2010 CCA CEO Damon T. Hininger received $3,266,387 in total compensation.
Private CEO profit for public injustice. Does that seem right to you?

We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.

-jsq

No Private Prison Petition

Most people I talk to about the proposed private prison in Lowndes County Georgia have never heard of it, and many of them want to know where they can find out more. Linked from the front page of the LAKE website is the letter to the Industrial Authority people are signing, which in turn has links to an online petition and a large amount of background material.

Feel free to use any of this as pointers to research for writing your own letter, of course.

We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.

-jsq

Occupying outside CCA’s Stewart Detention Center, Lumpkin, GA 18 November 2011

Want to do something to oppose privatization of prisons, but can’t be everywhere? You can help online Friday.

Immigrants For Sale posted Join The Virtual Vigil and Occupation Shut Down Stewart

On November 18th Brave New Foundation’s Cuéntame and a coalition of organizations along with families and friends of victims of for-profit detention will be occupying with a powerful vigil the outside of the largest private detention facility in the nation – Corrections Corporation of America’s Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. You can join them virtually — your voice is our most important tool in fighting back — by leaving your own name and a powerful message which will be read and/or written on a wall at the event & in memory of:

Follow the link for details.

Oh, and we don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.

PS: Owed to Cheryl Ann Fillekes.