Tag Archives: Georgia Department of Corrections

Videos: Animals, Library Board, Lighting, Mosquitoes, Prisoners, Stormwater @ LCC Regular 2024-08-27

Citizen Burton Fletcher spoke for five minutes about Animal Control Funding, out of the fourteen minutes of the Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission of August 27, 2024. That leaves 9 minutes, minus 2 minutes for the County Manager Report and a minute for the Call to Order, Invocation, and Pledge, means 7 minutes of actual business. They approved everything unanimously.

[Collage @ LCC 27 August 2024]
Collage @ LCC 27 August 2024

They reappointed Bill Booth and appointed Debra Ruth to the Lowndes County Library Board.

Nobody spoke for or against the 6.a. Basic Decorative Street Lighting Districts.

Below are links to each LAKE video of each agenda item, with a few notes by Gretchen Quarterman (actually none this time), followed by a LAKE video playlist.

County Manager Paige Dukes in her Reports said staff were attending the statewide Homebuilders Association meeting. Homebuilders are “stakeholders” after all.

In Citizens Wishing to Be Heard, Burton Fletcher noted $1.5 million for the Animal Shelter didn’t actually help much, and he wondered what has happened in the year or two since groundbreaking.

See also Continue reading →

Videos: Library Board, Lighting, Mosquitoes, Prisoners, Stormwater @ LCC Work 2024-08-26

Update 2024-09-08: Videos: Animals, Library Board, Lighting, Mosquitoes, Prisoners, Stormwater @ LCC Regular 2024-08-27.

Four minutes is all yesterday morning’s meeting took, the Work Session of the Lowndes County Commission.

Vice Chair Demarcus Marshall chaired the meeting in the absence of Chairman Slaughter.

[Collage @ LCC 26 August 2024]
Collage @ LCC 26 August 2024

The only questions were about 7.b. Annual Contract Renewal with the State of GA Department of Corrections. Public Works Director Robin Cumbus explained that the county only pays when the work details are used and that no qualified inmates have been available for some time, however having the contract in place makes it possible to use the inmates, should any become qualified.

The County Manager’s Report may or may not have been requested. In any case, she didn’t report. She usually saves that for the Regular Session.

Below are links to each LAKE video of each agenda item, with a few notes by Gretchen Quarterman, followed by a LAKE video playlist.

See also Continue reading →

Packet: Library Board, Lighting, Mosquitoes, Prisoners, Stormwater @ LCC 2024-08-26

Should be a quick meeting. Monday morning, to vote on Tuesday evening, the Lowndes County Commission will review applicants to the Library Board, approve an annual mosquito identifaction contract and an annual agreement with the state for prisoner work details, as well as two Special Decorative Street Lighting Districts, for The Landings, Ph. 3 and Quarterman Estates, Ph. 4 Sec. 2.

[Collage, Packet @ LCC 2024-08-26]
Collage, Packet @ LCC 2024-08-26

Here is the agenda.

The board packet, received in response to a LAKE open records request is on the LAKE website.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, AUGUST 26, 2024, 8:30 P.M.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2024, 5:30 P.M.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor

Continue reading →

Private prison is like biomass —Ashley Paulk

A deep silence came from the Industrial Authority yesterday, but GDOC board member Ashley Paulk compared the private prison to the biomass project.

I asked Lowndes County Commission Chair and Georgia Department of Corrections (GDOC) board member Ashley Paulk if he had heard whether the private prison contract had been extended past yesterday’s deadline. He had not. However, he did volunteer that he had asked the GDOC board whether they had had any discussion about such a prison and they had not. Further, GDOC just last year approved a CCA prison in Jenkins County, Georgia, so why would another one be built here? Prison populations are decreasing in Georgia, Paulk said. He even said, “It’s like the biomass situation,” in that there’s no business model. It was Ashley Paulk who signaled the end of the biomass project. And he already signaled the end of the private prison project on the front page of the VDT and he told Eames Yates of WCTV 29 Feb 2012,

Until you have a customer, you won’t see a prison, and they don’t have a customer.
He said several times yesterday he did not expect the private prison to be built. And he went beyond what he had said before in explicitly likening the private prison project to the biomass project.

After last Thursday’s Valdosta City Council meeting, two different Valdosta City Council members and Mayor John Gayle all told me they had talked to various people and they didn’t expect CCA’s private prison to be built.

I hope they’re all correct about that.

But we all still wait for the Industrial Authority to tell us. They’re missing a huge potential positive PR opportunity by not holding a big press conference and taking credit for ending the private prison. They still could do that this morning.

Or they could keep claiming that community activism has no effect, even though it is activism that got both of those projects in the news and got people like Ashley Paulk to speak out. Maybe the Industrial Authority likes people to laugh at them. Me, I’d prefer an Industrial Authority that stood up for the people of this community.

-jsq

Private prisons unaccountable —ACLU

Found on the ACLU blog of rights.

Azadeh Shahshahani wrote for the AJC 11 June 2009, Private prisons for immigrants lack accountability, oversight

On March 11, a 39-year-old man held in detention at the Stewart Detention Center, a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in southwest Georgia, died at a hospital in Columbus.
That’s in Lumpkin, west of Americus, south of Columbus.
To this day, the immediate cause of Roberto Martinez Medina’s death remains unclear (a press release pronounced the cause of death as “apparent natural causes”).

Last month, Leonard Odom, 37, died at the Wheeler County Correctional Facility in south-central Georgia.

That’s in Alamo, GA, between Macon, Tifton, and Savannah.
Both facilities are operated by Corrections Corp. of America, which has a contract with the Department of Homeland Security to operate the Stewart center and one with the Georgia Department of Corrections to operate the one in Wheeler County.
So, what happened? Continue reading →