Category Archives: Incarceration

Private prison operator sued for sexual abuse

Yes, it’s CCA, the same company that wants to build a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia, sued for sexual abuse at its immigration detention center in Taylor, Texas. CCA runs the ICE center in Georgia, too.

Elise Foley wrote for Huff Post yesterday, Immigrant Detainees Report Nearly 200 Instances Of Sexual Abuse

More than 180 sexual abuse complaints have been reported in immigration detention centers since 2007, according to government documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a class-action suit filed this week….

All three women in the ACLU lawsuit were held for a time in the T. Don Hutto Residiental Center in Taylor, Texas, a 512-bed detention center privately run on a government contract by private prison giant Corrections Corporation of America.

The suit targets Corrections Corporation of America along with three ICE officials, a former facility manager of the Hutto facility, and a former Hutto guard named Donald Dunn, who was charged last year with assaulting five women and has been accused of abusing more.

This is also the same CCA that runs a prison in Idaho commonly known as Gladiator School because it has twice the rate of assaults as other prisons in that state.

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

-jsq

Private prisons —Matt Flumerfelt

Received yesterday. -jsq
Dear Andrea, We spoke not long ago by phone. I just want to let you know that plans to bring in a private prison here are not going to sit well with many of us. In fact, it will most likely bring about a repeat of the recent Biomass issue. I don’t mean we are opposed to it. I mean we are vehemently opposed to it. It seems that Allen Ricketts and the other Board members don’t understand that Valdosta’s citizens don’t want to be informed of, for example, what finished products and raw materials will be stored in the distribution center slated to locate in Valdosta AFTER the contract has been signed. We have a right to know beforehand what kind of facility it is and what will be stored there. Informing us after the fact is not transparency. This is an issue that will continue to be revisited as long as the VLCIA continues to act unilaterally without considering the wishes of those who live here. We don’t want to be presented with a fait accompli. Also, the VLCIA is really not doing due diligence when it continues to court businesses that raise concerns over the ethical standards of the Board itself. Thanks. Matt Flumerfelt

Opposed to a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. —John S. Quarterman, et al.

A private prison in Lowndes County would be a bad business decision: it would not increase employment, it would be likely to close because of lack of “customers”, and it would drive away knowledge-based workers. The letter I read to the Industrial Authority Board and Staff Tuesday on behalf of some members of the community sumarizes appended documentation of all those and other points.

If you’d also like to sign, I’m still collecting signatures, and will periodically drop off more signed copies. Or, even better, write your own letter and send it to the Industrial Authority. Submit it to this blog and we’ll probably publish it.

Here’s the video:


Opposed to a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. —John S. Quarterman
Regular Meeting, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
Norman Bennett, Tom Call, Roy Copeland chairman, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett,
Andrea Schruijer Executive Director, J. Stephen Gupton attorney, Allan Ricketts Project Manager,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 18 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

Text of the letter is appended; follow the link for the documentation. Continue reading →

No Private Prison —John S. Quarterman

At the MLK Monument last Friday, I brought up private prisons. Most of the 150 people marching to Occupy Valdosta did not know that the Industrial Authority is helping Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) build a private prison in Lowndes County. Even though it would not decrease unemployment, it would compromise public safety, and it would probably compete with local labor.

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

Here’s the video:


No Private Prison —John S. Quarterman
We are the 99%,
Marching to Occupy Valdosta, Occupy Valdosta,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 14 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

Industrial Authority Board meets Tuesday 5:30 PM

Sure, most of the interesting stuff like Project Excel (the CCA private prison) is hidden under
  • Project Report-Allan Ricketts
Also, aren’t they supposed to say what an executive session is for?

But at least they do post an agenda now!

So, when will they be posting minutes?

Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Agenda
Tuesday, October 18, 2011 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
Continue reading →

The Grassroots Handbook Against School Consolidation

Received yesterday, The Grassroots Handbook Against School Consolidation: The Truth About Unification/Consolidation of the Valdosta/Lowndes School Systems By David E. Mullis, J.D., LL.M., October 12, 2011. It’s a 43 page exhaustive compendium of all the statements against consolidation by both school boards, the Valdosta City Council, etc., together with detailed debunking of every argument CUEE has made.

I think this passage on page 3 sums it up:

In other words, we can offer a great education, provide incentives for students to perform, make modifications to education to help students succeed, and provide technical help, but if the child is homeless, left home alone for long periods of time, living in a high crime area, living in a home with substance abuse, or just downright defiant, there is only so much the school can accomplish in helping these students succeed. Good parental, home and community environments are critical to the success of underprivileged children.

Therefore, CUEE and the Chamber of Commerce’s efforts are focused on the wrong methods of improving our school statistics. Unification will not accomplish any of their stated goals, but will create an enormous financial burden on the community and its families during this time of recession and high unemployment. The business community and volunteer organizations should instead focus on providing educational awareness and success clinics in low income areas. They should organize efforts to reduce poverty by bringing in industry with good wages and sponsoring basic community literacy and vocational training and tutoring. They should focus on programs to promote the value of education. They should organize drug awareness and rehabilitation programs in low income areas. They should focus their efforts in decreasing poverty. They should focus on encouraging community diversity. If they will do this, the educational problems will take care of themselves in good systems like Valdosta and Lowndes.

However, CUEE and the Chamber have insisted on pushing forward with their unification agenda despite the certain negative effect it will have on the community and the education of our children. They deny there will be any negative effect, but they have no personal accountability if they are wrong. They ignore all relevant studies and dismiss the results as being misleading. Then they state their own misleading and false assertions and claim them to be FACTS.

Indeed, what qualifies the Chamber of CUEE to talk about education? Judging by their track record, nothing does.

This Handbook is a great resource, and I applaud David Mullis for producing it.

-jsq

To the people of Valdosta and South Georgia —Occupy Valdosta

Posted today in Occupy Valdosta’s facebook page:
To the people of Valdosta and South Georgia

We, the local citizens occupying Valdosta, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; to nonviolently occupy public space; to create an open process to address the problems we face, and to generate solutions accessible to everyone.

Our issues are varied, yet related.

We seek

Continue reading →

Neighborhoods matter more than schools?

Where you live makes more difference to your education than where you go to school, says a news study, backed up by an older study.

Maureen Downey blogged for AJC 5 October 2011, Forget school vouchers. The route to improving education may be housing vouchers.

School voucher proponents argue that kids need a way out of failing schools, but research increasingly suggests that it would be more effective to provide them a way out of failing neighborhoods.

Should we consider giving poor families in low-performing school zones housing vouchers that they could use to relocate in the zone of a school performing above the area median?

I’d say that’s a bad solution to the problem the study identifies, and we already know better solutions. But first, from the abstract of the the study Continue reading →

Do we want a Gladiator School prison in Lowndes County?

Remember FBI investigating CCA “Gladiator School”, the CCA-run private prison in Idaho the FBI was investigating last year? Well, it hasn’t improved much. Cutting corners for private profit endangers prisoner safety and public safety. Is that what we want in Lowndes County, Georgia?

The same reporter, Rebecca Boone, wrote again for AP Sunday, almost a year later, CCA-run prison remains Idaho’s most violent lockup

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — In the last four years, Idaho’s largest privately run prison has faced federal lawsuits, widespread public scrutiny, increased state oversight, changes in upper management and even an ongoing FBI investigation.

Yet the Corrections Corp. of America-run Idaho Correctional Center remains the most violent lockup in Idaho.

Records obtained by The Associated Press show that while the assault rate improved somewhat in the four-year period examined, ICC inmates are still more than twice as likely to be assaulted as those at other Idaho prisons.

Between September 2007 and September 2008, both ICC and the state-run Idaho State Correctional Institution were medium-security prisons with roughly 1,500 inmates each. But during that 12-month span, ICC had 132 inmate-on-inmate assaults, compared to just 42 at ISCI. In 2008, ICC had more assaults than all other Idaho prisons combined.

By 2010, both prisons had grown with 2,080 inmates at ICC and 1,688 inmates at ISCI. Records collected by the AP showed that there were 118 inmate-on-inmate assaults at ICC compared to 38 at ISCI. And again last year, ICC had more assaults than all the other prisons combined.

What improvement there has been is because multiple inmates filed lawsuits.

Even so, Idaho renewed and even increased its contract with CCA. With one small improvement: Continue reading →

Valdosta State Students defend their right of free speech

Campus authorities tried getting students to move away from the University Center where Governor Nathan Deal was having a luncheon. The students stood their ground.

Here’s the video.


Protesting Gov. Nathan Deal at Valdosta State University (VSU), 16 September 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

The students had been standing on the sidewalk in front of the Continue reading →