Tag Archives: ALEC

The other immigration reaction

Probably everybody has heard that

Alabama followed Georgia down the Arizona lock-’em-up anti-immigration path.

According to

Albor Ruiz in the New York Daily News, 12 June 2011,

Washington’s inaction on the immigration crisis is no longer sprouting
only hostile and inhumane local laws. But there is growing evidence an
increasing number of local and state officials have tired of playing an
abusive and costly anti-immigration game they don’t believe in.

Two weeks ago, Gov. Cuomo pulled New York State from the Secure
Communities federal deportation program, following Illinois Gov. Pat
Quinn who had done the same weeks before. And days after Cuomo’s decision
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick took the same courageous step. All
three governors are Democrats and strong allies of President Obama.

They had plenty of reasons to quit the controversial Department of
Homeland Security program. Promoted as a tool to deport undocumented
immigrants convicted of serious crimes, in reality Secure Communities
targets mostly low-level offenders or those never convicted of any crime
at all.

And who benefits by arresting such people?
Private prison companies, which hold the new prisoners.

It’s not just northeast state, either.
Here’s a city and state on the frontline of immigration, Los Angeles, California:

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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:

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