Tag Archives: prison

What do churches think of private prisons?

It’s Sunday, so let’s ask some churches what they think of private prisons.

Episcopal Church:

“The shipping of fathers and mothers to private prisons in far-flung states is guaranteeing a new generation of frightened, angry, disenfranchised children, who are future inmates,” she said, adding that “families who try to visit loved ones are treated as suspects in many prisons. The children cannot understand the lack of warmth and hospitality in the visiting rooms.”

The Episcopal Church’s General Convention is on record in opposition to private prisons.

Presbyterian Church: Continue reading →

Brad Lofton asks for your ideas

In a generally congenial and well-received speech to the Lake Park Chamber of Commerce (LPCoC), Industrial Authority (VLCIA) executive director Brad Lofton gave an update on various projects and concluded by asking for input. “Economic development is a team sport,” he said, and “Give us ideas” and “There’s one of us and hundreds of you.”

Lofton was introduced by LPCoC chairman Dan Bremer who said that Lofton and VLCIA brought a plant to Lake Park with 400 workers.

In his speech, Lofton lauded the LPCoC as a great incubator of local businesses.

It’s going to come from all of you.
He talked about expanding local industries, especially PCA at length, asking David Carmon of PCA to stand up, saying PCA made a $230 million expansion in 2010, and noting “We had to compete for the PCA project.” Continue reading →

State needs to rethink locking up nonviolent offenders –Nathan Deal

Conservative Georgia governor Deal wants fewer people in prison, discovering, like Texas before, that Georgia can’t afford it. Jim Galloway reported in the AJC 17 Jan 2011, Georgia Gov: Drug court offers good alternative Cost of crime and punishment is high on new governor Nathan Deal’s list:
Georgia Governor Nathan Deal has said that violent offenders will remain behind bars, but the state needs to rethink the costs of locking up others, like nonviolent drug offenders.
Last May we noted that Georgia spends a billion dollars a year to keep the fourth-largest number of prisoners of any state. Now that the state is cutting every other budget, including huge cuts in education, we just can’t afford to lock so many people up.

The number of people locked up has grown way faster than violent crime since 1980. The U.S., with 5% of the world’s populatioon now has 25% of the world’s prison population: more than any other country total and per capita: more than China, more than Russia, more than Cuba. As Sen. James Webb remarked in 2009: Continue reading →

CCA private prisons and AZ immigration law

Kara Ramos reported in the VDT on 18 Aug 2010 that Private prison company picks Valdosta as potential site:

The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA) and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) announced an economic development partnership for future construction of a private prison.

Who is CCA? NPR’s Laura Sullivan reported on 28 Oct 2010 about Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law:

Continue reading →

Jailing Too Many People Costs Too Much

John Schmitt, Kris Warner, and Sarika Gupta write about The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration:
The United States currently incarcerates a higher share of its population than any other country in the world. We calculate that a reduction in incarceration rates just to the level we had in 1993 (which was already high by historical standards) would lower correctional expenditures by $16.9 billion per year, with the large majority of these savings accruing to financially squeezed state and local governments. As a group, state governments could save $7.6 billion, while local governments could save $7.2 billion.

These cost savings could be realized through a reduction by one-half in the incarceration rate of exclusively non-violent offenders, who now make up over 60 percent of the prison and jail population.

A review of the extensive research on incarceration and crime suggests that these savings could be achieved without any appreciable deterioration in public safety.

There’s a 19 page PDF report published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, but that one graph pretty much spells it out: incarceration went up abruptly starting in the early 1980s and continued up, while crime did not. What we have here is a very expensive policy mistake.

And where does most of the cost come from? Continue reading →

Cost of Incarceration in Lowndes County

I don’t know what we pay in local or state taxes to lock people up in Lowndes County, Georgia, although probably it’s in line with the high cost of incarceration in Georgia. I do know there are a lot of indirect costs, including this one:
Prisoners have to be released from prison or the county jail into the same community, and can’t get a job because they’re ex-cons, and often not even an apartment. Result? Homeless ex-cons turning to crime.
Female ex-cons in Lowndes County have some places they can turn to for housing. Male ex-cons have only the Salvation Army, and they have to leave there every morning early. In Atlanta they’ve examined their situation and determined that housing is the most central issue.

Which would we rather do? Pay as much per year to send them back to jail as it would cost to send them to college? Or find a way to provide housing for them?

How about helping ex-prisoners learn job-hunting skills and job-holding skills? Employment is the best preventative for crime. There are local organizations ready to work on that, such as CHANCE: Changing Homes and Neighborhoods, Challenging Everyone.

Local tax dollars need to be spent in a way that benefits the entire community, and not just a few. Maybe we can afford to do something about getting ex-prisoners a place to live and jobs so they stay out of crime and improve the local economy. Actually, can we afford not to do that to reduce incarceration expenditures?

Cost of Incarceration in Georgia

Carrie Teegardin and Bill Rankin
write in the AJC about A billion-dollar burden or justice? AJC investigation: Georgia leads nation in criminal punishment:
Georgia taxpayers spend $1 billion a year locking up so many criminal offenders that the state has the fourth-highest incarceration rate in the nation. When it comes to overall criminal punishment, no state outdoes Georgia.
They note that scare tactics made that happen.
But today, many public figures with strong anti-crime credentials are asking if that expenditure is smart, or even if it’s making Georgians safer. The debate about crime and punishment, once clearly divided along party lines, is now a debate in which conservatives often lead the charge for change.
Continue reading →

Prison population decline due to recession

FacingSouth reports on TURNING THE LOCK-EM-UP TIDE: State prison populations decline for first time since 1972:
Locking people up in jails and prisons is expensive. State officials know this all too well: In a country that puts more people behind bars than any other — the U.S. has less than 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of its prisoners — over 91% of the incarcerated are under state or local supervision.

The lock-’em-up approach to criminal justice that took off in the 1980s and ’90s may have helped a few political careers, but it has crushed state budgets: By 2008, states were spending over $50 billion a year on incarceration.

What else can you do?

But as Facing South has been reporting (see here and here), the Great Recession helped change that, pushing states to explore less expensive (and often more effective) options like alternative sentences for non-violent offenders and streamlining probation and parole.

Today, the Pew Center has released a report showing the shift in approach is bearing fruit: For the first time in 38 years, state prison populations are in decline.

Georgia, on the other hand, increased its prison population by 1.6%. Maybe instead of making massive cuts in education, Georgia could do something about the prison problem.

CHANCE: Changing Homes and Neighborhoods, Challenging Everyone

Many people have talked about the recidivism problem, but here’s a group trying to do something about it. Helping people right out of jail to learn how to get a job, convincing employers to hire them, mentoring them longterm with life coaches, lawyers, and accountants, and with some helping them start their own businesses and employ others. Jimmy Boyd is the principal organizer, and Steve Johnson is the outreach coordinator. They have some more people already signed up in a core team, and are looking for additional people, not to mention grants.

CHANCE had an organizational meeting 7 Jan 2010 at Floyd Rose’s Serenity Church. Here’s a playlist.


Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE.

Help give some people a needed push? Take responsibility and help solve a problem what will reduce crime by increasing employment? Here’s a chance to do that.

Prisoner Re-Entry

Prisoners have to be released from prison or the county jail into the same community, and can’t get a job because they’re ex-cons, and often not even an apartment. Result? Homeless ex-cons turning to crime. A New York Times editorial suggests Smart Answers to Recidivism:
Faced with soaring prison costs, states are finally focusing on policies that would help former prisoners stay out of jail after they are released. Some legislatures are reshaping laws that land parolees back inside for technical violations that should be dealt with on the outside. More than a dozen cities and counties have taken steps that make it easier for qualified ex-offenders to land government jobs, except in education and law enforcement and other sensitive areas from which people with convictions are normally barred by law.

Still, the nation as a whole needs to do much more about laws that marginalize former offenders — and often drive them back to jail — by denying them voting rights, parental rights, drivers licenses and access to public housing, welfare and food stamps, even in cases where they have led blameless lives after prison.

The specific example they consider is New Jersey, but Texas has also led in throwing people into jail and now is starting to try to do something about ex-prisoners once they get out. Paying as much per prisoner as would cost to send them to college, in a time of chronic budget shortfalls, is not very attractive. Georgia could also make changes to reduce recidivism, and reduce its prison population.