Tag Archives: Incarceration

Videos @ VLCIA 2012 02 23

Here are videos of the February 2012 Industrial Authority meeting. Apologies for the poor sound. The room turned out to have very echoey acoustics, and no placement of the camera seemed to alleviate that. Also it’s in three chunks, the first of them quite long. In the interests of moving along and catching up on posting videos of recent meetings, we’re going to leave it like that for now. Here’s the agenda.

Here’s a playlist:


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, 23 February 2012.
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

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Sentencing reform passed joint committee in Georgia

Remember the Georgia legislature was considering sentencing reform? Now it's passed the Special Joint Committee on Georgia Criminal Justice Reform.

Bill Rankin wrote for the AJC Tuesday, Sweeping changes to state sentencing laws passes committee,

A key legislative committee on Tuesday approved sweeping changes to Georgia's criminal justice system in a sentencing reform package intended to control prison spending and ensure costly prison beds are reserved for the state's most dangerous criminals.

Well, that sounds good!

But wait, this is cautious Georgia:

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Human rights and war on drugs incompatible —LEAP

While the local CCA private prison contract expired (yay!), the U.S. still has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners, which is seven times our incarceration rate of 40 years ago, while the crime rate is about the same, and Georgia has 1 in 13 adults in the prison system (jail, prison, probation, or parole. We can’t afford that. The money we waste locking people up could be sending people to college or paying teachers. And the root cause is still the failed war on drugs, which is also one of the biggest problems with human rights around the world.

LEAP wrote 16 March 2012, Human Rights is a Foreign Concept in the UN’s “War on Drugs”

“Fundamentally, the three UN prohibitionist treaties are incompatible to human rights. We can have human rights or drug war, but not both,” said Maria Lucia Karam, a retired judge from Brazil and a board member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).

Richard Van Wickler, currently a jail superintendent in New Hampshire, adds, “I suppose it’s not shocking that within the context of a century-long bloody ‘war on drugs’ the idea of human rights is a foreign concept. Our global drug prohibition regime puts handcuffs on millions of people every year while even the harshest of prohibitionist countries say that drug abuse is a health issue. What other medical problems do we try to solve with imprisonment and an abandonment of human rights?”

Good point.

We don’t lock up people for drinking. We only lock them up for endangering other people while drinking. And we tax alcohol sales and generate revenue for the state. Let’s do the same with drugs: legalize, regulate, and tax. That’s what we did with alcohol in 1933, and it’s time to do the same with other drugs.

-jsq

Industrial Authority still pushing “benefits” of scrapped private prison

The Industrial Authority appears to have learned nothing from the reams of information about the CCA private prison found for them by members of the public. They’re still pushing the “benefits” while saying nothing about the numerous cons (pun intended), the biggest of which is that the state and federal prison population is already decreasing, meaning we don’t need any more prisons, and if we built one here, it would be likely to close. So it’s not just a bad idea, it’s bad business. But here they go again….

Eames Yates wrote for WCTV Friday, Plans For New Prison Scrapped,

Schruijer went on to say “It would have been a huge economic impact. There were about 400 jobs associated with the project with approximately $150 million dollars in capital investment.”

Those four hundred jobs that the prison would have created, on average, would have payed between $40,000 and $50,000 dollars eah.

To people who mostly don’t live here now and mostly wouldn’t want to live here then, while driving away better businesses; she didn’t mention any of that, or the other problems with the whole private prison bad business.

That picture of Ms. Schruijer is hosted on the LAKE website, by the way. The VLCIA website is still broken, a week after I first pointed it out. Is this how the Industrial Authority plans to do PR, still promoting yet another failed Brad Lofton boondoggle while not making anything positive available on their own website?

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CCA private prison project shelved —VDT

According to this morning’s paper VDT, the contract between private prison company CCA and the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority has expired. The land owner could sell the land to CCA anyway, but that would be without a state or federal customer for the prison and without $5 or $6 million in economic incentives VLCIA was going to arrange, including without water and sewer.

According to the letter Brad Lofton signed and VLCIA sent to CCA 12 November 2009, the total of incentives was more like $9 million dollars of tax abatements for CCA or tax-funded work, all of which the rest of us taxpayers would have to pay for one way or another. All that plus the prison itself would have been paid for with our tax dollars. Tax dollars that now can go to rehabilitation or education instead.

So the people of the community win! Congratulations to Drive Away CCA and all others who helped oppose this private prison project, and congratulations to the Industrial Authority for finally saying what is going on.

Perhaps now the Industrial Authority can get on with bringing in industry that will actually contribute to the community. How about industry that people would be proud to move next to? Industry that would employ local people? Industry that would attract knowledge-based workers and businesses? Maybe that’s what VLCIA’s Strategic Plan Process is about. If so, let’s all help the Industrial Authority achieve it.

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VLCIA executive session on real estate transactions last Thursday noon

According to the VLCIA website, they had a special called meeting last Thursday, including apparently an executive session to discuss real estate transactions. One big real estate transaction with a deadline of today (13 March 2012) is the CCA private prison.

This is on the front page of the VLCIA website:

Notice:The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority will hold a Special Called Meeting on Thursday, March 8, 2012 at noon, for the purpose of reviewing bids and awarding a contract for the Miller Business Park Landscape/Irrigation Project and discuss real estate transactions.
Here’s the agenda. I congratulate the Industrial Authority for posting agendas!

Note the executive session. The agenda doesn’t say what the executive session is for (isn’t it supposed to, according to Georgia sunshine laws?). We can guess it’s for real estate transactions, as in the notice on the VLCIA front page.

Hm, what real estate transactions could that be? A contract for a landscaping and irrigation project isn’t a real estate transaction. Let me think… oh, the CCA private prison is a real estate transaction! Could that be what they were discussing?

The rest of VLCIA’s website is pretty thoroughly broken right now, as in

Warning: Parameter 3 to showItem() expected to be a reference, value given in /home/industri/public_html/includes/Cache/Lite/Function.php on line 100
None of the other links seem to work.

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Special Called Meeting of the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Thursday, March 8, 2012, 12 noon
Valdosta Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Conference Room
Valdosta, Georgia
  • Call to Order Special Called Meeting

  • Invocation

  • Welcome Guests

  • Westside Business Park

    • Reviewing bids and awarding a contract for the Miller Business Park Landscape and Irrigation Project
  • Adjourn Special Called Meeting into Executive Session
  • Adjourn Executive Session/Call to Order Special Called Meeting
  • Adjourn Special Called Meeting

Marching at the Industrial Authority 2012-03-06

After starting up at the prison site and heading out, we honking at the Valdosta City Council, we marched at the Industrial Authority office. Drive Away CCA!

Here’s Part 1 of 3:


Marching at the Industrial Authority 2012 Part 1 of 3:
No private prison in Lowndes County,
Motorcade against Corrections Corporation of America, Drive Away CCA,
CCA, VLCIA, Corrections Corporation of America, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority,
Valdosta City Council, Lowndes County Commission, incarceration, prison, private prison,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 6 March 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

They weren’t in, since they only meet once a month.

Here’s Part 2 of 3: Continue reading →

Crony capitalism corruption, a non-partisan enemy —Barbara Stratton

Received yesterday on VSU Health Sciences: much better than a private prison. -jsq
You know my main argument against the private prison is I don’t like public/private partnerships and the sweetheart deals they encourage. Also, when I requested CCA to provide me with information that supports private prisons so I could research both sides they did not respond. This led me to believe they have no concern for community opinion even when citizens are open minded and seeking honest information. They seem to prefer back room deals with local politicians that escape community detection unless citizens are aggressively observant like LAKE members.

However, we are not on the same page about what I consider simplistic solutions for reducing the prison population. Education and good drug treatment programs are definitely positives, but they are not the silver bullet liberals proclaim them to be. Criminals evolve from complex heredity and environmental mediums that don’t magically dissolve via education or intervention protocols. Certainly these are to be encouraged because they do help some, but they will never totally replace the need for legal intervention and penal institutions. In addition to educational and medical institutions not being a magical replacement solution for crime, these very institutions often encourage crony capitalism corruption, which we agree to be a non-partisan enemy.

In summary, I support our criminal justice system which includes prisons, but I do not support any mixing of government and business. Public/private partnerships are crony capitalism playgrounds that undermine free enterprise and citizen control. Unfortunately our trusted elected legislators have already filled our GA Codes and State Constitution with government consolidation and multi county regional partnership initiatives. At present, they are pushing SB 284, already passed by the senate, and in the house, which will further enhance Land Bank Authority powers and partnerships. As citizens we all need to remember that increasing unelected bureaucratic authorities equals minimized citizen control. We also need to ask our local, state and federal elected representatives why they are listening to special interest groups that encourage authorities and public/private partnerships instead of protecting their constituents.

-Barbara Stratton Commenter

We don’t have to agree on every point to oppose (private prison) or support (government transparency) the same things. Indeed, there will always be criminals, but we don’t need to lock up more than any other country on the planet. The big change in the environment that has produced seven times more criminals now than in the 1960s is the War on Drugs. Time to end that failed experiment in prohibition. Meanwhile, indeed crony capitalism corruption is our non-partisan enemy.

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Heading out Drive Away CCA 2012 03 06

Yes, we drove about that slow the whole way: that was in the plan. We honked at Valdosta City Hall: the City Council could hear us inside.

They have Citizens to be Heard at their regular meeting tonight.

Here’s the video:


Heading out Drive Away CCA 2012 03 06
No private prison in Lowndes County,
Motorcade against Corrections Corporation of America, Drive Away CCA,
CCA, VLCIA, Corrections Corporation of America, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority,
Valdosta City Council, Lowndes County Commission, incarceration, prison, private prison,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 6 March 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

Why private prison employees might not want to work too close to home —Barbara Stratton

Received yesterday on Video: Drive Away CCA radio. -jsq
Great interview John. The comment about employees not wanting to work at a facility in the same county they live in was an interesting thought relative to the proposed local employment benefits. When I worked for CCA in the inmate Mental Health unit at the Valdosta Correctional Institute we were always warned that keeping pictures of our families or anything personal on our desks was possibly dangerous and therefore not recommended. I loved my job there because being inside the prison meant we had to form close working relationships with each other and I love teamwork on the job and it was never boring. We had almost constant training hours warning us about the dangers of being in close contact with inmates and all the rules about interacting. Forheight=”1 instance we had one inmate who was a brilliant artist. He like to gift us with his artwork, which we were allowed to accept as a non-personal gift to be placed on the office walls. He was a very well behaved prisoner especially to females, but his beautiful artwork always consisted of some form of predator watching prey such as a cat watching a bird. We loved the artwork, but took note of the inuendos.

Prisoners were always given strict instructions that

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