That survey plat was included in EXCEL (CCA) Title-Survey Objections (Reno-Cavanaugh) of 19 November 2010. That’s one of a group of files returned by VLCIA in response to an open records request by Matt Flumerfelt.
We now have some idea of what the prison would look like, due to this plan: Continue reading
Amanda Peterson Beadle wrote for ThinkProgress 16 November 2011, Private Prison Charges Inmates $5 a Minute for Phone Calls While They Work for $1 a Day
Last year the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’sThey charge for food, too.largest private prison company, received $74 million of taxpayers’ money to run immigration detention centers. Georgia, receives $200 a night for each of the 2,000 detainees it holds, and rakes in yearly profits between $35 million and $50 million.
Prisoners held in this remote facility depend on the prison’s phones to communicate with their lawyers and loved ones. Exploiting inmates’ need, CCA charges detainees here $5 per minute to make phone calls. Yet the prison only pays inmates who work at the facility $1 a day. At that rate, it would take five days to pay for just one minute.
And remember, CCA profits from anti-immigration laws, at taxpayer expense:
Recent anti-immigration laws in Alabama (HB56) and Georgia (HB87) guarantee that neighbor facilities will have an influx of “product.” In the past few years, CCA has spent $14.8 million lobbying for anti-immigration laws to ensure they have continuous access to fresh inmates and keep their money racket going. In 2010 CCA CEO Damon T. Hininger received $3,266,387 in total compensation.Private CEO profit for public injustice. Does that seem right to you?
We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia.
Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.
-jsq
have never heard of it,
and many of them want to know where they can find out more.
Linked from
the front page of the LAKE website
is
the letter to the Industrial Authority people are signing,
which in turn has links to
an online petition
and
a large amount of background material.
Feel free to use any of this as pointers to research for writing your own letter, of course.
We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.
-jsq
Immigrants For Sale posted
Join The Virtual Vigil and Occupation Shut Down Stewart
On November 18th Brave New Foundation’s Cuéntame and a coalition of organizations along with families and friends of victims of for-profit detention will be occupying with a powerful vigil the outside of the largest private detention facility in the nation – Corrections Corporation of America’s Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. You can join them virtually — your voice is our most important tool in fighting back — by leaving your own name and a powerful message which will be read and/or written on a wall at the event & in memory of:
Follow the link for details.
Oh, and we don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.
PS: Owed to Cheryl Ann Fillekes.
Last week, the ACLU of Georgia submitted comments to the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to ask that the agency not renew its contract with Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) for operation of the McRae Correctional Facility.Why? Lack of medical treatment for prisoners, among other reasons. For example: Continue reading
McRae is located in Telfair County, Georgia. The prison is owned by CCA, which purchased it in 2000. McRae currently houses a population of low security, adult male, primarily non-citizen prisoners. The contract between CCA and the BOP is set to expire in November 2012.
Azadeh Shahshahani wrote for the AJC 11 June 2009, Private prisons for immigrants lack accountability, oversight
That’s in Lumpkin, west of Americus, south of Columbus.On March 11, a 39-year-old man held in detention at the Stewart Detention Center, a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in southwest Georgia, died at a hospital in Columbus.
To this day, the immediate cause of Roberto Martinez Medina’s death remains unclear (a press release pronounced the cause of death as “apparent natural causes”).That’s in Alamo, GA, between Macon, Tifton, and Savannah.
Last month, Leonard Odom, 37, died at the Wheeler County Correctional Facility in south-central Georgia.
Both facilities are operated by Corrections Corp. of America, which has a contract with the Department of Homeland Security to operate the Stewart center and one with the Georgia Department of Corrections to operate the one in Wheeler County.So, what happened? Continue reading
Marian Wright Edelman wrote 13 December 2010, Strength to Love: A Challenge to the Private Prison Industry:
Continue readingA few months ago a group of earnest and determined stockholders traveled together by bus from Washington, D.C., to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend a shareholders’ meeting for the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company in the country. The group included ex-offenders who now each hold one share of stock in the same prison company that once held them captive, and they attended the meeting in the hopes of sharing their perspective on how the privatized prison industry can better serve society by rehabilitating inmates, rather than just serving its own profits by perpetuating the prison cycle.
The group, part of Washington, D.C.’s Church of the Saviour, is named Strength to Love, after the title of one of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s sermon collections. Members explain their mission this way:
AP wrote May 20, 2011, Immigration crackdown worries Vidalia onion county:
Signs point to an exodus in Vidalia onion country. Fliers on a Mexican storefront advertise free transportation for workers willing to pick jalapenos and banana peppers in Florida and blueberries in the Carolinas. Buying an outbound bus ticket now requires reservations.
While most states rejected immigration crackdowns this year, conservative Georgia and Utah are the only states where comprehensive bills have passed. With the ink barely dry on Georgia’s law, among the toughest in the country, the divisions between suburban voters and those in the countryside are once again laid bare when it comes to immigration, even among people who line up on many other issues.
Guess who wanted this crackdown even though rural south Georgians didn’t:
The crackdown proved popular in suburban Atlanta, where Spanish-only signs proliferate and the Latino population has risen dramatically over the past few decades. Residents complain that illegal immigrants take their jobs and strain public resources.That’s right: Atlanta, not content with lusting after our water, now scares off our workers.
Do immigrants really take jobs from locals?
Such claims never seem to have data to back them up.
I tend to agree with
Carlos Santana:
“This is about fear, that people are going to steal my job,” Santana said of the law. “No we ain’t. You don’t clean toilets and clean sheets, stop shucking and jiving.”In south Georgia local people won’t pick Vidalia onions for the wages immigrants will, and the wages locals want the farmers can’t afford.
Remember who profits from this crackdown, at the expense of Georgia
farmers and taxpayers:
private prison companies and their investors.
We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County. Spend those tax dollars on education instead.
-jsq
PS: Vidalia onion story owed to Jane Osborn.
And this is just the start of what’s going to happen to Georgia as long as that law is in effect.Santana took his turn at the podium on the field in a pre-game ceremony before the Braves-Phillies game to criticize the immigration bill just signed into law by Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal Friday.
“I represent the human race,” the Mexican-born Carlos Santana said. “The people of Arizona, the people of Atlanta, Georgia, you should be ashamed of yourselves.”
The Georgia immigration law, HB 87, cracks down on illegal immigration by increasing enforcement powers and requiring many employers to check the immigration status of new hires.
But what do you really think, Carlos? Continue reading
W.W. wrote in The Economist 24 August 2010 about The perverse incentives of private prisons:
Arizona, the place Georgia just copied Continue readingLAST week authorities captured two fugitives who had been on the lam for three weeks after escaping from an Arizona prison. The convicts and an accomplice are accused of murdering a holiday-making married couple and stealing their camping trailer during their run from justice. This gruesome incident has raised questions about the wisdom and efficacy of private prisons, such as the one from which the Arizona convicts escaped.