ACLU podcast against private prisons —Alex Friedmann

CCA inadvertently rehabilitated former prisoner Alex Friedmann and gave him a new career, lobbying against prison privatization. He says:
In my view, the worst thing is that they have normalized the notion of incarcerating people for profit. Basically commodifying people, seeing them as nothing more than a revenue stream….

If you incarcerate more people and you put more people in your private prisons you make more money. Which provides perverse incentives against reforming our justice system. And increasing the number of people we’re putting in prison, whether they need to be there or not, just to generate corporate profit. I think that’s incredibly immoral and unethical, I think that’s the worst aspect of our private prison industry.

This comes from the ACLU’s Prison Voices, Episode 1: Private Prisons:
The ACLU’s National Prison Project has released a report about the private prison industry. In this podcast, we’ll be hearing from an expert on private prisons, Alex Friedmann. A former prisoner who served 10 years in Tennessee prisons, Friedmann is now the associate editor for Prison Legal News and the President of the Private Corrections Institute, a non-profit watchdog group that opposes for-profit prison.
Friedmann also said:
If we want to reduce reliance on private prisons, we need to reduce our prison population.

You can help stop CCA right here at home. We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead. Follow this link to petition the Industrial Authority to reject CCA’s private prison.

-jsq