Category Archives: Incarceration

Prison slave labor infects beef with rat feces

In case you thought prison slave labor didn’t affect you, watch Mike Elk on Democracy Now today, New Exposé Tracks ALEC-Private Prison Industry Effort to Replace Unionized Workers with Prison Labor:
“more than 14 million pounds of beef infected with rat feces processed by inmates were not recalled, in order to avoid drawing attention to how many products are made by prison labor.”
Is this what you want for yourself and your children? If not, it’s time to stop ALEC crafting state laws to lock people up and then exploit them as slave labor.

We can start by not accepting a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.

Update 9:35 AM 6 Aug 2011: Fixed the links to the Democracy Now story. Thanks for catching that, Barbara!
Here’s a bonus link to the story in The Nation.

-jsq

PS: This post owed to Cheryl Ann Fillekes.

The members of the CUEE, they send their children to private schools —Annie Fisher

Valdosta school board member Annie Fisher pointed out CUEE members sent their chidren to private schools and now they’re meddling in public education. She listed some real issues, such as Valdosta city schools remain segregated, focussing on tests just to meet AYP, and we need to remove students from the prison to the classroom.
“How can we equally educate each child?”
Yes, let’s forget “unification” and focus on that.

Here’s the video:


The members of the CUEE, they send their children to private schools —Annie Fisher
No school consolidation,
Press Conference, Friends of Valdosta City Schools (FVCS),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 July 2011.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

You thought maybe I made up the three points I proposed to improve education? Nope, unlike CUEE, I’ve been paying attention.

-jsq

When officials act like they are hiding something, they usually are. —VDT

Go VDT! There are so many potential applications of today’s editorial in the Valdosta Daily Times, from animals, to prisons, to zoning code enforcement, to biomass:
But there are still those who don’t understand the purpose of a newspaper, and it’s clearly not to be a marketing tool for the community. In addition to reporting the news of the day, a newspaper’s job as a member of the “fourth estate,” so deemed by Thomas Jefferson, is to hold public officials accountable for their actions.

“When officials act like they are hiding something, they usually are.”
To The Times and its editorial board, it’s far worse for the community’s image to have public officials knowingly lie, illegally withhold public documents and try to bully those who are only after the truth.

When officials act like they are hiding something, they usually are. You can’t be accused of lying if you don’t lie. You won’t receive an open-records request if you answer questions honestly and in accordance with the law.

Companies looking to settle in a community are understanding when it comes to crime, as it happens everywhere. But far more interesting to them is the honesty and integrity of the community’s officials.

If an entity will lie and withhold information from the local news media and the citizens, why would industry expect any different?

There was an old game show called Truth or Consequences. Too often, some entities ignore the truth and are surprised by the consequences. Sadly, the public too often feels the consequences when it could use a little truth.

Now let’s see them apply the same standard to CUEE, or can the VDT not see through the bogus claims of an organization it supports?

-jsq

CCA and The GEO Group have been accused of human rights abuses —United Methodist Church

Methodists lobby private prison companies CCA and GEO as shareholders about human rights issues. Seems like this doesn’t help with the 2008 United Methodist Church Resolution 3281, Welcoming the Migrant to the US, which advocated the “elimination of privately-operated detention centers,” but at least they’re doing something. I expect what they’ll accomplish by such lobbying is to demonstrate that private prison companies have no intention of addressing human rights issues, because that would cut into their profits.

Published by General Board of Pension and Health Benefits of The United Methodist Church July 2011, Faith-Based Investors Take a Closer Look at Private Prisons,

In 2011, members of the United Methodist Interagency Task Force on Immigration approached the General Board of Pension and Health Benefits (General Board) with concerns about two private prison companies in the General Board’s investment portfolio: Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and The GEO Group, Inc. The United Methodist Interagency Task Force on Immigration was created following the General Conference of 2004. Membership includes representatives from the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM), the General Commission on Religion and Race, the General Board of Church and Society (GBCS), Methodists Associated to Represent the Cause of Hispanic Americans (MARCHA) and two bishops. In addition, GBCS has shared its concern that CCA and The GEO Group have been accused of human rights abuses of young people, immigrants and people of color.

CCA and The GEO Group are the two largest private prison companies in the U.S., operating and/or owning, respectively, 111 and 118 correctional, detention and/or residential treatment facilities. In 2010, CCA earned nearly $1.7 billion; The GEO Group, $1.3 billion.

Investor Engagement with Private Prisons

Continue reading →

Strikes inside Georgia prisons

David Slavin wrote for BayView 21 January 2011, Georgia prisoners staged a STRIKE, not a riot or a protest:
Inmates are the largest single workforce in Georgia. THEY ARE PAID NO WAGES. To anyone who is familiar with Doug Blackmon’s “Slavery by Another Name,” this forced convict labor system should come as no surprise. It is part of the “New Jim Crow” mass incarceration system that reincarnates the Old Jim Crow in the first half of the 20th century.
So some inmates decided to do something about it.
This action by the inmates was a STRIKE, not a riot or a protest. It was an action by workers TO WITHHOLD THEIR LABOR by refusing to leave their cells. The risks they have taken are enormous. Refusal to work gets you a “Disciplinary Report,” which can affect parole and your “privileges” in prison.

The demands they presented were for

Continue reading →

School consolidation report: can cause irreversible damage

People ask me: why do the NAACP and the SCLC oppose school consolidation? Well, here’s some recent research that backs up their position, followed by their positions. My summary: because it caused great damage last time, and this time would be no different.

Craig Howley, Jerry Johnson, Jennifer Petrie wrote 1 February 2011, Consolidation of Schools and Districts: What the Research Says and What it Means:

…the review of research evidence detailed in this brief suggests that a century of consolidation has already produced most of the efficiencies obtainable. Research also suggests that impoverished regions in particular often benefit from smaller schools and districts, and they can suffer irreversible damage if consolidation occurs.
Isn’t such irreversible damage what Rev. Floyd Rose got Mrs. Ruth Council to admit?
Rev. Rose: “…we were told about the world, where we came from, how we got here.”

Mrs. Council: “I think we did receive a better education.”
They are referring to black schools before desegregation in the 1960s.

Rev. Floyd Rose is president of the local SCLC, and here is a statement by Leigh Touchton, president of the local NAACP: Continue reading →

Disparity in Criminal Justice

Is a private prison “good clean industry” as a local leader once told me?
According to the CRF [Constitutional Rights Foundation], over 25 percent of black males and 16 percent of Hispanic males spend time in prison, while only 4 percent of white males do so. Blacks make up only 12 percent of the United States population.
Why? Continue reading →

ALEC crafts state laws, including for private prisons and big oil

ALEC writes laws for big oil and for private prison companies. In the first LAKE post about the proposed private prison in Lowndes County, I pointed out that ALEC helped CCA lobby for that Arizona “anti-immigration” law that actually is stuffed with new jail, misdemeanor, and felony penalties that bring more “customers” to CCA private prisons. Georgia was just the first of 24 states lobbied by ALEC to pass such bogus bills for CCA’s private profit. Since then other people have dug into ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and found its tentacles everywhere, promoting profits for big business at taxpayer expense.

Alison Fitzgerald wrote for Bloomberg 21 July 2011, Koch, Exxon Mobil Among Corporations Helping Write State Laws:

Koch Industries Inc. and Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) are among companies that would benefit from almost identical energy legislation introduced in state capitals from Oregon to New Mexico to New Hampshire — and that’s by design.

The energy companies helped write the legislation at a meeting organized by a group they finance, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a Washington-based policy institute known as ALEC.

The corporations, both ALEC members, took a seat at the legislative drafting table beside elected officials and policy analysts by paying a fee between $3,000 and $10,000, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg News.

The opportunity for corporations to become co-authors of state laws legally

Continue reading →

Prison slave labor

You, too, can end up as a 21st century slave in the U.S.A.! For drugs, or debt, or especially for being black.

Rania Khalek wrote for AlterNet 21 July 2011, 21st-Century Slaves: How Corporations Exploit Prison Labor: In the eyes of the corporation, inmate labor is a brilliant strategy in the eternal quest to maximize profit.

There is one group of American workers so disenfranchised that corporations are able to get away with paying them wages that rival those of third-world sweatshops. These laborers have been legally stripped of their political, economic and social rights and ultimately relegated to second-class citizens. They are banned from unionizing, violently silenced from speaking out and forced to work for little to no wages. This marginalization renders them practically invisible, as they are kept hidden from society with no available recourse to improve their circumstances or change their plight.

They are the 2.3 million American prisoners locked behind bars where we cannot see or hear them. And they are modern-day slaves of the 21st century.

And who are these prison slaves? Continue reading →

Private Prisons don’t save money in Arizona

For this Sunday, a video of a church person spelling out The Pitfalls of Private Prisons; story by Caitlin Harrington for Arizona Public Media, July 20, 2011.
Arizona recently greenlit a new private prison slated to host over 5,000 beds.

Private prison supporters have long argued that private prisons save the state money. Now new research by the American Friends Service Committeesuggests Arizona’s private prisons are generally costing the same amount, if not more than state prisons.

“There’s an abundance of evidence that private prisons aren’t saving us money, are not entirely safe, and are really not good for the state of Arizona,” says Caroline Isaacs, program director of the committee, tells Arizona Illustrated.


Caroline Isaacs, program director, American Friends Service Committee

We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.

-jsq