Category Archives: Economy

Quakers and others organized private prison hearings in Tucscon

Churches don’t always sit quietly on their hands when there is injustice impending for their communities. Sometimes they help organize hearings in which pro and con are discussed and recorded, as the American Friends Service Committee did in Tucson last year.

According to Mari Herreras in Tucson Weekly, 26 October 2010,

The American Friends Service Committee, Private Corrections Working Group, UA Latino Law Students Association, and St. Francis in the Foothills United Methodist Church have organized a series of private prison hearings across the state that kick off tomorrow in Tucson at Pima Community College, Downtown Campus at 1255 N. Stone Ave., in the Amethyst Room from 6 to 8 p.m., moderated by yours truly, Mari Herreras.

The public is invited to present testimony, but the AFSC has also invited representatives from the Arizona Department of Corrections, Corrections Corporation of America (expected to build a new prison in Tucson) and Management and Training Corporation (which manages the Marana Community Correctional Treatment Facility). Word is no one has responded from those organizations, but AFSC organizers know the following presenters will be there to provide critical information on the private prison industry: Stephen Nathan, editor of Prison Privatization Report International; Joe Glen, spokesman for Maricopa and Pima Juvenile Corrections Associations; Brent White, UA law professor; Jim Sanders, real estate appraiser; Susan Maurer, retired corrections commissioner from New Jersey; and Victoria Lopez, from ACLU of Arizona.

The hearing will include the following community leaders who will hear testimony and ask questions: Pima County Supervisor Richard Elias; Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik; Assistant Tucson City Manager Richard Miranda; Representative Phil Lopes; and Mark Kimble, former associate editor of the Tucson Citizen.

They even made sure both the basic positions and the actual debate would be recorded: Continue reading →

Bright flight visualized

Lanier County gained more than 30% in children under 18. Lanier looks like the exurbs around Atlanta, except it’s even more striking. Also visible on the map is Hamilton, County, Tennessee, home of Chattanooga, CUEE’s favorite example of school unification: Hamilton County showed a loss of children while just across the state line Catoosa County, Georgia gained 15-30%. If school unification doesn’t cause bright flight, it doesn’t seem to stop it.

Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg wrote in USA Today 3 June 2011, Census reveals plummeting U.S. birthrates

Because families with children tend to live near each other,

the result is an increasingly patchy landscape of communities teeming with kids, and others with very few.

…

Even in counties where the percentage of children grew, only 49 gained more than 1 percentage point — many of them suburbs on the outer edge of metropolitan areas such as Forsyth, Whitfield and Newton outside Atlanta and Cabarrus and Union outside Charlotte.

So that makes Lanier County one of only 49 Continue reading →

U.S. Senate finds drug war failed

When it’s so obvious even the U.S. Senate can find it, after the rest of the world points it out, maybe there’s something to it.

Eyder Peralta wrote for NPR yesterday, Report: U.S. Drug War Spending Is Unjustifiable

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said that after a year-long investigation by a Senate subcommittee, “it’s becoming increasingly clear that our efforts to rein in the narcotics trade in Latin America, especially as it relates to the government’s use of contractors, have largely failed.”

The report comes a week after a high-powered commission of former world leaders came to the conclusion that the global war on drugs had “failed.” Mark wrote about that report, last week.

That would be Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy that recommended start legalizing drugs with marijuana?

And what happens to what little there is of a business plan for private prisons when the U.S. and Georgia wise up and legalize marijuana and other drugs?

We don’t need another bad business boondoggle in Lowndes County. Spend that tax money on education instead.

-jsq

Skipper Bridge Road bridge, Withlacoochee River

The old bridge got condemned during the great flood of April 2009.

Lowndes County is rebuilding the bridge over Skipper Bridge Road near the new school site. I think this is using FEMA funds.

It’s not clear that the new Staten Road bridge is high enough 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.

-jsq

Solar Cheaper Than Fossil Power in Five Years —Mark M. Little of GE

Brian Wingfield wrote for Bloomberg 26 May 2011, GE Sees Solar Cheaper Than Fossil Power in Five Years
Solar power may be cheaper than electricity generated by fossil fuels and nuclear reactors within three to five years because of innovations, said Mark M. Little, the global research director for General Electric Co. (GE)

“If we can get solar at 15 cents a kilowatt-hour or lower, which I’m hopeful that we will do, you’re going to have a lot of people that are going to want to have solar at home,” Little said yesterday in an interview in Bloomberg’s Washington office. The 2009 average U.S. retail rate per kilowatt-hour for electricity ranges from 6.1 cents in Wyoming to 18.1 cents in Connecticut, according to Energy Information Administration data released in April.

GE is working on thin film solar. Meanwhile, costs are already coming down: Continue reading →

“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.

-jsq

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 →