Tag Archives: private prison

Former Mexican president Vicente Fox urges drug legalization

Sandra Dibble writes in signonsandiego 6 April 2011 that Former Mexican president urges drug legalization

Photo by Omar Martinez — Frontera
Legalization of drugs in Mexico would not only lead to lowered violence and drug consumption but also boost its economy, former Mexican President Vicente Fox said Wednesday during a speech to a convention of newspaper editors from the United States and Latin America.

“Things are going very badly for Mexico with the issues of organized crime and violence,” Fox said in Spanish. “We’re losing large volumes of tourists, if not in the interior, then at the border. We’re losing a great number of investments.”

And if there were more jobs in Mexico, from tourism and investments, there would be fewer Mexicans trying to sneak into the U.S. for jobs.

Will legalization cause more drug use? No:

On Wednesday, Fox cited the example of Portugal, where he said drugs use has fallen by 25 percent a decade after they were legalized there.

That would be better than locking up more people for private profit while not decreasing drug use, and that’s what we’re doing now.

-jsq

Georgia: $18,000 per prisoner vs. $3,800 per student –Fox News

Elizabeth Pran asks Who Gets More Tax Dollars… Prisoners or School Children? Of course, being Fox News, it advocates cutting prison costs by reducing air conditioning for prisoners. The real problem is the War on Drugs and Three Strikes. She does at last manage to mention in passing “alternative programs for non-violent offenders.” Yes, like not locking up people for minor drug offenses in the first place!

And indeed, educating students today would cost less than locking them up later.

Meanwhile, privatizing prisons does nothing to solve these problems; it just lines some corporation’s pockets with tax money.

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Georgia press complicit in promoting private prisons

The Augusta Chronicle puts it in the lede for the whole state, Georgia showing signs of recovery: Tax numbers give reasons for hope, Associated Press, Monday, March 14, 2011:
Hotels are hiring desk clerks and housekeepers in anticipation of a spring tourist boom in Savannah, while even a rural Georgia city devastated by manufacturing losses is putting some people back to work as construction begins on a $57 million private prison.
Where is that? Continue reading →

Private Prisons failing in Texas, leaving locals in lurch

John Burnett writes for NPR that Private Prison Promises Leave Texas Towns In Trouble:
It seemed like a good idea at the time when the west Texas farming town of Littlefield borrowed $10 million and built the Bill Clayton Detention Center in a cotton field south of town in 2000. The charmless steel-and-cement-block buildings ringed with razor wire would provide jobs to keep young people from moving to Lubbock or Dallas.

For eight years, the prison was a good employer. Idaho and Wyoming paid for prisoners to serve time there. But two years ago, Idaho pulled out all of its contract inmates because of a budget crunch at home. There was also a scandal surrounding the suicide of an inmate.

Shortly afterward, the for-profit operator, GEO Group, gave notice that it was leaving, too. One hundred prison jobs disappeared. The facility has been empty ever since.

The pullquote: Continue reading →