Tag Archives: prison

Gov. Deal celebrates Juneteenth by recommending indentured agricultural labor

Remember 85% of people in the prison system are black, and Gov. Nathan Deal recommends during the week of Juneteenth celebrations, according to David Rodock in the VDT today, Parolees to replace migrants? Gov. Deal says put probationers in fields
With the recent exodus of undocumented Hispanic migrant workers leaving Georgia to avoid the consequences of House Bill 87, Gov. Nathan Deal made a statement on Tuesday suggesting that probationers could potentially fill the approximately 11,000 open jobs in the state’s agricultural economy.

“Specifically, I asked Department of Corrections Commissioner Brian Owens and (Department of Agriculture) Commissioner Gary Black to review the current situation and offer possible options,” said Deal in his statement. “Commissioner Owens has indicated that there are 100,000 probationers statewide, 8,000 of which are in the Southwest region of the state and 25 percent of which are unemployed … I believe this would be a great partial solution to our current status as we continue to move towards sustainable results with the legal options available.”

The potential move would allow probationers who are unable to find work to have a source of income, provided they are able to meet employer standards. Income can then be used to pay probation fines, along with other state fines that are a requirement of their probation sentence.

This fits right in with Joe Pritchard’s rumored suggestion to replace animal shelter employees with interns.

Hey, if there’s one thing Georgia is good at, it’s locking up more people even while other states realize they can’t afford to do that anymore.

So if probationers don’t want to pick onions, lock ’em up again, in the new private prison VLCIA wants to build in Lowndes County! That will benefit private prison executives and investors and not us in Lowndes County, but hey, that will serve those immigrants right!

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Treating an “epidemic of mass incarceration” —Physicians in NJEM

Everybody from Serpico to Richard Branson and even the U.S. Senate says the War on Drugs has failed and we should stop locking up so many people. Now physicians weigh in.

ScienceDaily, 1 June 2011, U.S. Physicians Call for New Approach to Address National ‘Epidemic of Mass Incarceration’

With 2.3 million people behind bars and an estimated 10 million Americans cycling in and out of correctional facilities each year, the United States is in the midst of an “epidemic of mass incarceration,” say researchers from the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, a collaboration of The Miriam Hospital and Brown University.

In a Perspective article to appear in the June 2 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the authors argue that much of this epidemic is due to inadequate treatment of addiction and mental illness in the community, which they say can be linked to policy changes over the last 30 years, such as severe punishment for drug users as a result of the nation’s “War on Drugs.”

“More than half of all inmates have a history of substance use and dependence or mental illness, yet they are often released to the community without health insurance or access to appropriate medical care and treatment,” says Josiah D. Rich, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, which is based at The Miriam Hospital.

“Sadly, without these linkages to transitional care in the community, the majority of these individuals will re-enter the revolving door of the criminal justice system, which already costs our county $50 billion annually,” he adds.

What is to be done? Continue reading →

Prisons bad for education budget

Building a prison is not just a bad business gamble now that crime rates are down and state budgets are tight. It’s bad for other things, too. As the reporter who originally broke the story about the empty new prison in Grayson County, VA noted 2 January 2011, Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a national group that promotes criminal justice reform, summed it up:
“Corrections over the past 25 years has become an increasingly big component of state budgets, to the point that it’s competing for funding with education and other core services,” Mauer said. “And you can’t have it both ways anymore.”

If we want knowledge-based jobs here, a private prison is not how to get them. Let’s not build a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. Spend those tax dollars on education instead.

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Sounds like trouble is brewing down I-75. —Jim Galloway

What’s even more secretive than the Industrial Authority? Valdosta State Prison!

The AJC has noticed

Sounds like trouble is brewing down I-75. —Jim Galloway
that the VDT is getting serious about open records requests:
The Valdosta Daily Times’ Open Records request concerning violent incidents in the Valdosta State Prison was denied Monday.

The Department of Corrections (DOC) denied all requests in the Times’ Open Records filing, stating that, under Georgia law, the documents do not have to be released.

After receiving phone calls from concerned individuals who have knowledge of recent violent prison attacks, the Times submitted the Open Records request to Department of Corrections Commissioner Brian Owens.

Kay Harris wrote that in the VDT today.

Curiously, the state doesn’t even provide a picture of the prison.

It’s enough to make you wonder what they have to hide.

Apparently the VDT wonders: Continue reading →

Former Bureau of Prisons chief quit after DUI

At 55, why would Harley G. Lappin retire from his former cushy job as Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons? It might have something to do with being charged with a crime.

According to Ryan J. Reilly at TMPMuckracker 30 March 2011,

Lappin was pulled over less than a half mile from his house at 3:59 a.m. on Feb. 26, the website reported. He’s been charged with driving while under the influence, reckless driving, negligent driving and failure to obey the instructions of a traffic-control device, according to the news website. A spokeswoman said that Lappin informed his staff of the arrest.

Lappin will be due in court on June 16, a little over a month after his resignation becomes effective on May 7.

Well, that will be interesting, to see if the new private prison czar gets off or ends up a felon.

CCA is the company that wants to build a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. Spend that tax money on education, instead.

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New CCA CCO is former Director of Federal Bureau of Prisons

The largest private prison company in the U.S. has hired the former director of the world’s largest prison system, according to CCA’s own press release of 1 June 2011:
NASHVILLE, TN–(Marketwire – Jun 1, 2011) – CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) (NYSE: CXW), America’s leader in partnership corrections, announced that effective June 1, 2011, Harley G. Lappin, 55, shall serve as Executive Vice President and Chief Corrections Officer (CCO). In this role, Mr. Lappin will be responsible for the oversight of facility operations, health services, inmate rehabilitation programs, purchasing and TransCor, the Company’s wholly-owned transportation subsidiary. He succeeds Richard P. Seiter, who announced his decision to step down as CCO earlier this year, effective May 31, 2011.

Mr. Lappin, as a career correctional administrator, previously served as the Director, Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) — the nation’s largest correctional system, a position he held since 2003, prior to retirement in May 2011. He served in a variety of roles with the Bureau of Prisons for more than 25 years, beginning in 1985, including Regional Director, Warden of the United States Penitentiary in Indiana, and Warden of the Federal Correctional Institution in North Carolina, among other positions. As Director of the BOP, Lappin had oversight and management responsibility for 116 federal prisons, 14 large, private contract facilities and more than 250 contracts for community correction facilities, in total comprising more than 215,000 inmates managed by 38,000 employees, with a $6.4 billion budget.

How’s that for a revolving door?

CCA is the company that wants to build a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. Spend that tax money on education, instead.

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“We really need it in the county really bad.” —Grayson County, VA

Is Lowndes County in such bad shape that we, too, want a private prison, no matter that there’s no business case for it? Or should we learn from one bad business bet and not double down on another?

Susan Kinzie wrote in the Washington Post 30 May 2011, New Virginia prison sits empty, at a cost of more than $700,000 a year

This is how bad the economy is in southwestern Virginia: People are wishing they had more criminals in town.

That’s because Grayson County has a brand-new state prison standing empty. No prisoners. And that means no guards, no administrators, no staff, no jobs.

“I wish they would go ahead and open it up,” said Rhonda James of Mouth of Wilson, echoing many residents there. “We really need it in the county really bad.”

Three hundred new jobs — maybe 350 — that’s what people were told when the prison was planned. With about 11 percent unemployment and no relief in sight, that sounded really good to an awful lot of people here.

But months after the commonwealth finished building the 1,024-bed medium-security prison for $105 million, it remains empty, coils of razor wire and red roofs shining in the sun, new parking lot all but deserted and a yawning warehouse waiting for supplies.

And it’s costing more than $700,000 a year to maintain.

Meanwhile, the story continued, Virginia has closed 10 prisons due to budget shortfalls and lack of prisoners. And it’s not just Virginia: Continue reading →

Private Prisons don’t save much money —NYTimes

Richard A. Oppel Jr. wrote on the front page of the New York Times, 19 May 2011, Private Prisons Found to Offer Little in Savings
The conviction that private prisons save money helped drive more than 30 states to turn to them for housing inmates. But Arizona shows that popular wisdom might be wrong: Data there suggest that privately operated prisons can cost more to operate than state-run prisons — even though they often steer clear of the sickest, costliest inmates.
That’s right, they leave we the taxpayers to pay more in public prisons to house the most expensive prisoners:
The research, by the Arizona Department of Corrections, also reveals a murky aspect of private prisons that helps them appear less expensive: They often house only relatively healthy inmates.

“It’s cherry-picking,” said State Representative Chad Campbell, leader of the House Democrats. “They leave the most expensive prisoners with taxpayers and take the easy prisoners.”

And yet private prisons still cost more.

Could it have something to do with their executive salaries?

Anyway, we don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County. Spend that tax money on education instead.

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Find better way to fight crime —Rev. Chuck Arnold

Another Sunday, another preacher against private prisons. Unlike some, this one is not famous; Rev. Chuck Arnold is pastor of Valley of the Flowers United Church of Christ in Vandenberg Village, CA. He wrote in the Lompoc Record 20 May 2011
Going to a RAND Corporation study, in 1994 higher education received 12 percent of the state budget, corrections 9 percent, other services 9 percent (which included controlling environmental pollution, management of parks, fighting of brush fires, regulating insurance and other industries). By 2002 higher education took the biggest hit, along with “ other services,” both of which were virtually eliminated from the state budget. Corrections on the other hand went from 9 percent to 18 percent of the budget.
Which means that California, like so many other states, including Georgia, spends more on prisons than on education.

And not just public prisons anymore: Continue reading →

Drug war fail: devastating consequences —Global Commission on Drug Policy

Stop locking up drug users who harm no others, legalize drugs starting with marijuana, switch to health and treatment, stop harrassing farmers, abandon zero tolerance and invest instead in youth activities, focus on reducing harm, and do it now, so says a commission of business moguls, former heads of state, financial professionals, writers, and activists.

Writes Douglas Stanglin today in USA TODAY,

“The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world,” says the Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy in its opening statement. “Fifty years after the initiation of the U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President Nixon launched the U.S. government’s war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed.”
According to whom?
The 19-member commission, a private venture chaired by ex-Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, includes George Schultz, President Reagan’s Secretary of State; Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group; former U.N. Secretary General Koffi Anna; George Papandreou, prime minister of Greece; Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Javier Solana,former EU foreign minister.
Here’s their full report.

What do they recommend? Continue reading →