Tag Archives: VLCIA

Judge rules against Florida prison privatization

Judge Jackie Fulford ruled yesterday for the Second Circuit Court of Florida
that the prison privatization plan the Florida legislature added to the state budget is unconstitutional on a key point of all prison privatization schemes. Her ruling agreed with the Florida Police Benevolent Association, which is a union of correctional workers.

Judge rules prison privatization plan unconstitutional Dara Kam wrote for Post on Politics yesterday, Judge Rules Florida Prison Privatization Unconstitutional,

The privatization of 29 prisons in the southern portion of the state from Manatee County to Indian River County to the Florida Keys should have been mandated in a separate bill and not in proviso language in the budget, as lawmakers did in the must-pass budget approved in May and signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott, Fulford ruled.

“This Court concludes that if it is the will of the Legislature to itself initiate privatization of Florida prisons, as opposed to DOC, the Legislature must do so by general law, rather than ‘using the hidden recesses of the General Appropriations Act,’” Fulford wrote in her order issued Friday morning.

The order doesn’t say Florida can’t privatize prisons, rather that it can’t do it by hiding it in the budget process. But alleged budget savings are the only reason privatization backers are willing to admit to, so that’s no small matter.

And if prison privatization is such a money-saver, why did the prison companies’ cronies in the statehouse try to do it like this: Continue reading →

Calderón contra la Guerra de las Drogas?

Juan Carlos Hidalgo wrote for Cato 20 September 2011, Calderón Hints at Drug Legalization Again,
Mexican President Felipe Calderón seems to be experiencing a dramatic change of mind regarding his war against drug cartels. Soon after a drug gang set fire to a casino in Monterrey a few weeks ago killing 52 people, Calderón told the media that ”If [the Americans] are determined and resigned to consuming drugs, they should look for market alternatives that annul the stratospheric profits of the criminals, or establish clear points of access that are not the border with Mexico.” Many people interpreted that as a veiled reference to drug legalization.
The referenced story by Julian Miglierini 1 September 2011 for BBC News also said the Mexican president went farther: Monterrey attack: Game-changer in Mexico’s drugs war?
Hours after it took place, the president described it “as an abhorrent act of terror and savagery” and later said the authors were “true terrorists”.
When you think about the billions or trillions the U.S. and other countries spend against terrorists who cause less damage than the Mexican drug cartels, he could be indicating that priorities are misdirected.

The Cato article says Calderón has now gone further: Continue reading →

Gov. Deal: the bad, prison slave labor competing with free labor

Gov. Nathan Deal said he was for free-enterprise chickens, but he wants the government to supply prison slave labor to grow them.

Continuing Gov. Deal: the good, the ugly, and the bad on prisons, quoting again from David Rodock’s interview with Gov. Nathan Deal in today’s VDT.

The Bad

Remember Gov. Deal mentioned poultry operators as an illustration of his bogus point that government intervention is always bad? Well, I guess he forgot that when he answered this question:
THE TIMES: Your proposal to have probationers replace illegal immigrants for farm labor. Did that idea work? If it didn’t or it did, what’s going to happen next year during the picking season?

DEAL: “Well, it worked with some success. I think there was a great deal of skepticism about it on whether these people will work and there is a threat associated with their presence. We have to remember that probationers are not under arrest. They are free in our society.

Really? Except for little things like not being able to vote if they are felons, and having to pay their probation officers. But back to the Gov.: Continue reading →

If public prisons are bad, what about private prisons?

If the VDT can’t get a public prison already in Lowndes County to comply with Georgia’s quite strong open records law even with years of requests, why would we want a private prison in Lowndes County, which wouldn’t have any open records requirements at all?

Dean Poling and Kay Harris wrote a long article about weapons in prisons for the VDT 28 August 2011, An eye for an eye: Life behind bars, concluding:

Inmates are intelligent. All they have is time. Why? Because there is no rehabilitation anymore. They are merely being housed. The prison programs don’t work, especially for lifers with nothing else to lose. So they have plenty of time to figure out ways to beat the system.
The VDT has been trying to find out more since at least 2009, when Malynda Fulton wrote 9 November 2009, Department of Corrections says records are ‘state secrets’ or destroyed, Continue reading →

CCA really doesn’t like community opposition, so apparently it works

Private prison company CCA, which in conjunction with ALEC promotes laws in dozens of states and nationally that lock up more people for CCA’s private profit at taxpayer expense, really doesn’t like community opposition to siting private prisons in their communities. Hm, why would CCA hate community opposition so much, unless it works?

Not quite rolling his eyes when she mentions visiting communities, CCA’s video pair disparage community opposition to private prisons on their own web page, When Corrections Meets Communities:

Question: There are Web sites and blogs that are adamantly opposed to your company and industry, and they provide negative information about you. Why?
Hm, you mean like some of the material on this blog?
Answer: CCA and all corrections companies recognize the ongoing efforts of local, loosely formed grassroots groups and national, well-funded associations that jointly oppose the establishment of partnership prisons, many for self-serving reasons. Such groups go to great lengths to attack, criticize and misrepresent the entire industry. They make false allegations and often rely on hearsay and unreliable sources. Regrettably, these biased groups often resort to misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric to turn isolated incidents into broad generalizations about the corrections industry as a whole.
Well-funded? Har! OK, not this blog. That plus we provide evidence, like Continue reading →

“We may face community opposition to facility location” —CCA

Look who cares about community opposition!

In CCA’s 2010 Annual Report to the SEC:

We may face community opposition to facility location, which may adversely affect our ability to obtain new contracts. Our success in obtaining new awards and contracts sometimes depends, in part, upon our ability to locate land that can be leased or acquired, on economically favorable terms, by us or other entities working with us in conjunction with our proposal to construct and/or manage a facility. Some locations may be in or near populous areas and, therefore, may generate legal action or other forms of opposition from residents in areas surrounding a proposed site. When we select the intended project site, we attempt to conduct business in communities where local leaders and residents generally support the establishment of a privatized correctional or detention facility. Future efforts to find suitable host communities may not be successful. We may incur substantial costs in evaluating the feasibility of the development of a correctional or detention facility. As a result, we may report significant charges if we decide to abandon efforts to develop a correctional or detention facility on a particular site. In many cases, the site selection is made by the contracting governmental entity. In such cases, site selection may be made for reasons related to political and/or economic development interests and may lead to the selection of sites that have less favorable environments.
CCA doesn’t like community opposition, because it reduces CCA’s ability to site prisons, which adversely affects their bottom line. Funny how that happens because a private prison company’s main goal is profit, not rehabilitation, public safety, or justice.

We don’t have to accept a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. If we tell the Industrial Authority and CCA no, CCA will probably go away.

And the more communities that tell CCA no, the less profitable they will be.

-jsq

NAACP on MLK on War on Drugs

I hate to repeat a preacher, but it’s Sunday, and Robert Rooks wrote for NAACP 24 August 2011 U.S. Approach to War on Drugs Ignores Dr. King’s Lessons on Justice, Compassion.
After forty years of the war on drugs, America continues to have laws that stratify society based on race and class and continues to ignore Dr. King’s lessons on justice, compassion and love.

My favorite quote from Dr. King speaks to the heart of the problem with America’s criminal justice system. “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

America’s criminal justice system is reckless and discriminate. America has five percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Blacks are incarcerated at four to five times the rate of whites for drug crimes, even though the majority of those who use and sell drugs are white. The majority of those incarcerated are people who have a history with mental health and substance abuse.

Not only does incarceration impact individuals but it undermines families,

Continue reading →

Alabama bishops criticize ALEC’s immigration law

Some churches actually speak in public on what they profess to believe.

Campbell Robertson wrote for the New York Times 13 August 2011, Bishops Criticize Tough Alabama Immigration Law


Josh Anderson for the New York Times
CULLMAN, Ala. —On a sofa in the hallway of his office here, Mitchell Williams, the pastor of First United Methodist Church, announced that he was going to break the law. He is not the only church leader making such a declaration these days.

Since June, when Gov. Robert Bentley, a Republican, signed an immigration enforcement law called the toughest in the country by critics and supporters alike, the opposition has been vocal and unceasing.

Thousands of protesters have marched. Anxious farmers

Continue reading →

NAACP paradigm shift

Why does it matter that the NAACP wants an end to the War on Drugs?

Leonard Pitts Jr. wrote for the Miami Herald 30 July 2011, NAACP’s paradigm shift on ending the Drug War

Here’s why this matters. Or, more to the point, why it matters more than if such a statement came from Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. The NAACP is not just the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. It is also its most conservative.
Conservative as in:
…denoting a propensity toward caution and a distrust of the bold, the risky, the new. And that’s the NAACP all over.

…there has always been something determinedly middle class and cautious about the NAACP. This is the group whose then-leader, Roy Wilkins, famously detested Martin Luther King for his street theatrics.

For that group, then, to demand an end to the Drug War represents a monumental sea change.

How monumental? Continue reading →

NAACP calls for end to War on Drugs

Nafari Vanaski, wrote for Gateway newspapers 18 August 2011, NAACP calling for truce in nation’s drug war
If you grew up at the same time that I did, you’ll remember the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign that became popular in the mid-1980s and early 1990s.

It manifested itself in many ways, from the posters and talks in class to the “very special episodes” of shows such as “Blossom” and “The Facts of Life,” where a character encounters a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who is pressuring him or her to try drugs. Inevitably, good prevailed and the druggie turned out to be from a broken family and needed only a good face-to-face with Nancy Reagan, the driving force behind the campaign, to overcome his addiction. (She appeared on “Diff’rent Strokes,” and considering the real-life histories of Gary Coleman, Todd Bridges and Dana Plato, she probably should have stuck around for a five-episode story arc.)

“Just Say No” was part of the larger war on drugs the Nixon administration declared in 1971. For grown-ups, that war symbolized a lot more than sappy primetime television. Especially for black adults. For them, it meant stricter laws for those found buying, selling and distributing illegal drugs.

To that end, the NAACP took an interesting step at its national convention last month. It approved a resolution to end the war on drugs because of its devastating effect on the black community.

Interesting how the headline writer watered that down: NAACP called Continue reading →