Tag Archives: jail

CCA Go Away

Somebody else is trying to drive away CCA. Near Ft. Lauderdale, CCA wants to put a detention center in Southwest Ranches, Florida, and CCA Go Away (facebook) is organizing against that.

Lots of clever signs, from the unmistakable:

CCA Go Away
to the symbolic orange jailbirds holding oversize $20 and $100 bills.

Plenty more in their flickr set:

No Prison Here in This Town

Put Residents Before Profit

The Prison is No Longer A Secret

Did You Know?
A Prison is coming to your neighborhood!
Say No to
Corrections Corporation of America
No CCA
If they can do it, we can, too. Come to the prison site Tuesday 5PM to help Drive Away CCA!

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George Rhynes is back on the air

George Rhynes is back on the air on WGOV 950 AM Majic 95. He talked quite a bit about what he’s been doing since he was last on the radio, including keeping the Quitman 10 story alive, Citizens Wishing to be Heard at the Valdosta City Council, jail issues, and more, which is what he said he would do:
PURPOSE AND DIRECTION OF TODAYS PROGRAM: To keep citizens informed; help eliminate the deaf; dumb; and blind process in our beloved community. For too long local radio has failed to have open disucssion about the real issues that too often are not published and excluded from our history.

This is an honest attempt to keep alive what others may not believe to be of value to us; or coming generations that will look for a real and true history of what took place today. So I hope this will be carried on by others in our beloved community for the good of all human beings.

Here’s video:

Welcome back, George!

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PS: Other people may call him crazy; I call him dedicated.

“I want him in my jail, not a private jail.” —Sheriff Chris Prine

Last week Sheriff Chris Prine volunteered his opinion of private prisons:
You were talking about the private jail system. I’d like to voice my opinion of that. The private jail from our study so far, the cost…. I’m going to use a figure of around 800 inmates; we’re pretty close to 900 in our jail now. We figure around maybe $36 a day to feed the inmate, counting of course the food and our employment.

And looking at the private jail sector. And of course I’m responsible for the inmate whether he is in a private jail or in my jail. If I’m going to be responsible for that inmate, I want him here; I want him in my jail, not a private jail.
[applause]

Another thing is the cost factor.

Continue reading →

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 →

If Gov. Deal can investigate school elections, why not jail deaths? — George Rhynes

George Rhynes suggests that if Gov. Deal can investigate a school board election in Brooks County, he could also
issue another Executive Order and STOP the jail deaths in the Valdosta, Lowndes County Jail. (30 Jail deaths from 1994-2009) Today the general public is told that the public does not have a right to know under the law.
In this video George goes into many years of evidence regarding jail violations.

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Map of prisons in Georgia

The Georgia Department of Corrections (GDOC) does not provide a map of prisons in Georgia; at least not that I’ve been able to find. CCA does not provide a map of its private prisons, either. This omission seems odd for an industry that brags about how good it is economically.

But someone has composed this google map that gives the big picture. I don’t know if this map is current or accurate, but the spot checks I’ve made show markers for real prisons. Did you know there were so many?

Apparently,

  • the reddish circles are county prisons;
  • the red arrows are state prisons for men like Valdosta State Prison;
  • the yellow arrows are state prisons for women (Pulaski) or juveniles (Arrendale), except Washington State Prison appears to be back to housing men;
  • the blue arrows are Regional Youth Detention Centers (RYDC);
  • and the green arrows are at least some of CCA’s private prisons,

Prisons are bad economics, producing no longterm improvement in employment, and risking closure, leaving communities with expensive white elephants. We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead. Follow this link to petition the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority.

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I really support … allowing non-violent offenders the opportunity to work and rehabilitate — Jessica B. Hughes

Received yesterday on Ankle monitoring for Lowndes County Jail. -jsq
I really support this idea. Initially, I was concerned about it, because I know that things like the SCRAM bracelet and the ignition interlock devices are very expensive to install and maintain, especially if you consider the costs involved with probation fees. $213.00/month may not sound like a lot of money to some people, but it is a king’s ransom to others (saying $7.00/day makes it seem more manageable). Still, allowing non-violent offenders the opportunity to work and rehabilitate themselves outside of a prison is a big step forward in the philosophy of crime and punishment in this county, in my opinion.

-Jessica B. Hughes

Ankle monitoring for Lowndes County Jail @ LCC 13 December 2011

Tuesday the Lowndes County Commission approved ankle bracelet monitoring for nonviolent jail inmates so they can serve the rest of their time outside the jail, putting them in a better environment and decreasing expenses at the Sheriff’s office. This sounds like a good idea. I have not expressed an opinion because, as Barbara Stratton pointed out, the public doesn’t really know what was in the proposal County Commissioners got in their agenda packet. However, I would like to compliment Commissioner Joyce Evans about trying to do something about nonviolent prisoners.

Summarizing the ankle monitoring discussion of Monday morning, County Manager Joe Pritchard Tuesday evening asked the Lowndes County Commission to approve continued work by county staff with the Sheriff’s office in implementing an ankle monitoring system to move some inmates out of the county jail.

Commissioner Richard Raines gave the credit to Commissioner Joyce Evans for both proposing a drug court and for proposing ankle monitoring.

Commissioner Evans declined comment but did make the motion, seconded by Commissioner Powell, and approved unanimously.

The VDT had a little more information in David Rodock’s Wednesday story: Continue reading →

8.a. Ankle Monitoring System —Joe Pritchard @ LCC 12 December 2011

County Manager Joe Pritchard briefly described agenda item
8.a. Ankle Monitoring System
He said it would permit jail inmates to serve some of their time outside the jail. He mentioned early discussions with Commissioners Joyce Evans and Richard Raines, and said it started related to drug court, but the idea had expanded. He recommended the board approve the County Manager working with the judges to organize the monitoring.

Chairman (and former Sheriff) Ashley Paulk remarked that this could lower the jail population. He seemed to be in favor of it.

Sheriff Chris Prine had some concerns that were hard to hear, but seemed to be related to budget.

Pritchard indicated that everybody realized the program was an experiment, and everyone would work with the Sheriff to avoid any unnecessary impact.

Commissioner Raines also reassured the Sheriff along the same lines.

They vote on it tonight, 5:30 PM.

Here’s the video:


8.a. Ankle Monitoring System –Joe Pritchard @ LCC 12 December 2011
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 12 December 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

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Open record requests and jail deaths —George Boston Rhynes

George Rhynes complimented Ashley Paulk for having provided information about people in jail when Paulk was Sheriff, and noted that unfortunately that had not been the case since. He asked if someone could point him to where he could get such information. Chairman Paulk reminded him that the Sheriff is a constitutional officer, and the Commission did not direct him. George Rhynes responded:
Everywhere I go, I hear that. I go to Brooks County, and they inform me of the same thing.
Chairman Paulk noted:
… by state law.
They agreed on that, and George said he thought nonetheless:
Seems like somebody in the state of Georgia would know how to get that information, if it is open.

George also said: Continue reading →