Tag Archives: private prison

Felony sentencing for possession — Are you high?

And now a word from the ACLU (yes, I am a card-carrying member):

As we watch the state budget crisis deepen, one of the most wasteful and harmful policies of our state government – felony sentences for simple drug possession – remains in place. We are spending unnecessary millions to incarcerate people who pose no threat to public safety.

Sentencing reform is the way to bring prison spending back in line with other priorities – like public schools and universities, social services, and drug treatment.

That’s actually from the ACLU of Northern California, but the point is the same for anywhere that locks up people for minor drug offenses, like Georgia.

We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County. Spend that tax money on schools instead.

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Expand the array, publish the minutes, private prison is a bad idea —John S. Quarterman @ VLCIA 17 May 2011

Here’s what I said to the VLCIA board on 17 May 2011. Notes are appended after the video:


Expand the array, publish the minutes, private prison is a bad idea —John S. Quarterman @ VLCIA 17 May 2011
Regular Meeting, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
Norman Bennett, Roy Copeland, Tom Call, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett chairman,
J. Stephen Gupton attorney, Allan Ricketts Acting Executive Director,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 17 May 2011.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

Congratulations on the Wiregrass Solar commissioning. Since this was not ever the largest array in Georgia let’s encourage Mayor Fretti and Commissioner Powell to help VLCIA expand the local array.

Referring to Mary Gooding’s comments about people who wanted to see minutes probably going to be frustrated, I pointed out that Continue reading →

Prescription Drugs Kill 300 Percent More Americans than Illegal Drugs

The war on some drugs has failed. Locking up people for marijuana while oxycontin is legal makes no sense. Locking up huge numbers of people for private profit at taxpayer expense while schools are getting defunded makes even less sense.

David Gutierrez wrote in Natural News 10 November 2008, Prescription Drugs Kill 300 Percent More Americans than Illegal Drugs

A report by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission has concluded that prescription drugs have outstripped illegal drugs as a cause of death.

An analysis of 168,900 autopsies conducted in Florida in 2007 found that three times as many people were killed by legal drugs as by cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines put together. According to state law enforcement officials, this is a sign of a burgeoning prescription drug abuse problem.

Is this just in Florida? Continue reading →

The United Methodist Church declares its opposition to the privatization of prisons and jails

We already heard from the Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Catholic churches, against private prisons. Now let’s hear from the United Methodist Church:
Our Lord began his ministry by declaring “release to the captives…” (Luke 4:18 NRSV), and he distinguished those who would receive a blessing at the last judgment by saying, “I was in prison and you visited me.” (Matthew 25:36b NRSV) Jesus also declared that one cannot serve two masters and condemned the idolatry of mammon, or wealth. (Luke 16:13).

Christians, therefore, must have a special concern for those who are captive in any way, especially for those who are imprisoned, and for the human conditions under which persons are incarcerated. Individual Christians and churches must also oppose those policies and practices which reflect greater allegiance to the profit motive than to public safety and to restorative justice for offenders, crime victims, and local communities.

Therefore, The United Methodist Church declares its opposition to the privatization of prisons and jails and to profit making from the punishment of human beings.

ADOPTED 2000

The statement has further practical explanation of why this opposition: Continue reading →

Private prisons are a public safety problem

They don’t save money and they do increase escapes. Justice shouldn’t be for private profit at public expense.

W.W. wrote in The Economist 24 August 2010 about The perverse incentives of private prisons:

LAST week authorities captured two fugitives who had been on the lam for three weeks after escaping from an Arizona prison. The convicts and an accomplice are accused of murdering a holiday-making married couple and stealing their camping trailer during their run from justice. This gruesome incident has raised questions about the wisdom and efficacy of private prisons, such as the one from which the Arizona convicts escaped.
Arizona, the place Georgia just copied Continue reading →

Georgia first to copy Arizona anti-immigrant bill

Georgia passes anti-immigrant law that benefits private prison companies.

Seth Freed Wessler wrote 15 April 2011, Welcome to the Wild, Wild South: Georgia Passes SB 1070 Copycat Bill

Many worry about the financial costs of the bill. Though these are surely not the greatest concerns for immigrant communities who would be most impacted if Georgia’s bill is enacted, many business groups are anxious. A national boycott of Arizona cost the state an estimated $250 million in lost taxes, tourism and other revenue, according to the Center for American Progress.

Even before the Georgia bill passed, a group of organizations across the country threatened to wage a boycott of the state of Georgia if it enacts the legislation.

Most states that have had this bill introduced have had the good sense to get rid of it. Continue reading →

FBI investigating CCA “Gladiator School”

Rebecca Boone wrote for AP, 30 November 2010 that Video release prompts FBI prison investigation: Critics claim the privately run Idaho Correctional Center uses inmate-on-inmate violence

Jessie L. Bonner / AP file


Former inmate Hanni Elabed is shown during a July 26 interview in Boise, Idaho. Elabed suffered brain damage and persistent short-term memory loss after he was beaten by another inmate while multiple guards watched at the Idaho prison operated by Corrections Corporation of America.

The surveillance video from the overhead cameras shows Hanni Elabed being beaten by a fellow inmate in an Idaho prison, managing to bang on a prison guard station window, pleading for help. Behind the glass, correctional officers look on, but no one intervenes when Elabed is knocked unconscious.

No one steps into the cellblock when the attacker sits down to rest, and no one stops him when he resumes the beating.

Videos of the attack obtained by The Associated Press show officers watching the beating for several minutes. The footage is a key piece of evidence for critics who claim the privately run Idaho Correctional Center uses inmate-on-inmate violence to force prisoners to snitch on their cellmates or risk being moved to extremely violent units.

On Tuesday, hours after the AP published the video, the top federal prosecutor in Idaho told the AP that the FBI has been investigating whether guards violated the civil rights of inmates at the prison, which is run by the Corrections Corporation of America.

What is the inmates’ nickname for this CCA-run prison? Gladiator school.

There is a lot more in the article.

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Local NAACP votes to oppose private prison in Lowndes County

Leigh Touchton commented yesterday about a meeting Tuesday 19 April. She is president of the Valdosta-Lowndes NAACP. -jsq
Valdosta NAACP branch voted last night to oppose the private prison approved by VLCIA. We don’t need more prisons, and they do not improve economic standards in any community in which they have been located. There is a safety burden upon the community, there are human rights abuses, and the focus should be on saving the state money by rehabilitation of non-violent offenders rather than mass incarceration. When America has 5% of the world’s population but incarcerates 25% of the world’s prisoners, this is unacceptable. In North Carolina, private prisons have put local furniture manufacturers out of business because they cannot compete with the prison’s slave labor. These are not sustainable and it’s no mystery why most of the large Christian denominations in America oppose them.

-Leigh Touchton

Here’s Brad Lofton’s explanation of the private prison. Here are statements on private prisons by three Christian denominations. And the state of Israel has outlawed private prisons. More information about CCA and private prisons here.

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One of the ways we save money is not build new prisons —Grover Norquist

On the Alyona Show, Grover Norquist: Prison Reform NOW:
A long prison sentence might be justified, but it also might be very expensive, and maybe it’s not the best way to deal with people with drug problems.

…

People do want to know that violent criminals are locked up for a good length of time. They’re not particularly interested in locking up in prison for $20,000 a year or in some places in California, $50,000 a year…. It’s not free to put someone in prison.

He even recommends trying rehabilitation and drug treatment.

Texas is the state that’s moved out there, done some very serious analysis.
Drug rehabilitiation, lower recidivism, lower costs.

In Lowndes County, Georgia, we have two hospitals, a drug treatment center, and many doctors and nurses. What if we invested in them instead of in a money-losing private prison?

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To the Armed Forces of Mexico —Javier Sicilia

50,000 people marched in Cuernavaca 6 April 2011 to the gates of a military base, where the usual military guards were nowhere to be seen. Then a poet, whose son had recently been killed by the drug war, climbed up and said:
To the Armed Forces of Mexico
You have always been the custodians of peace for our nation
That’s why we never want to see you again,
outside of your barracks,
except to defend us from foreign invasion,
or to help us, as you always have, during natural disasters.

What does this have to do with us? We don’t need a private prison; we need an end to the War on Drugs that fills our prisons with more prisoners total and per capita than any other nation on earth.

Todos somos Sicilia.

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