George Boston Rhynes asked about
Open record requests and jail deaths
and got the same excuses he’s heard elsewhere:
nobody seems to be responsible for supplying information to the public
about what’s going on in the Lowndes County Jail.
John Robinson asked about
Contracts on the south side
related to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and to
Title III Section 3 of the HUD program
and got a clarification from the Chairman that the county has no
Title III projects.
Matt Portwood
asked the Commission or the individual Commissioners to state a position
on school consolidation
and was told they weren’t going to.
The VDT printed that much the next morning, the morning of the election
with the referendum on school consolidation.
They did not print Chairman Paulk’s allusion to
his already-known support for FVCS in opposing consolidation,
but LAKE published a video with that on Election Day, and you can
see it here.
Tony Daniels wanted to know
How can we pursue happiness when we don’t even have a job?
and had several recommendations for how the various local elected and
appointed bodies could go about getting us more jobs.
He also illustrated that the Commissions ordinance on Citizens Wishing
to Be Heard is, as we’ve discovered on many previous occasions,
merely guidelines at the whim of the Chairman.
George Rhynes complimented Ashley Paulk for having provided
information about people in jail when Paulk was Sheriff,
and noted that unfortunately that had not been the case since.
He asked if someone could point him to where he could get such
information.
Chairman Paulk reminded him that the Sheriff is a constitutional
officer, and the Commission did not direct him.
George Rhynes responded:
Everywhere I go, I hear that.
I go to Brooks County, and they inform me of the same thing.
Chairman Paulk noted:
… by state law.
They agreed on that, and George said he thought nonetheless:
Seems like somebody in the state of Georgia would know how to get that information,
if it is open.
Roy Taylor said his grandson graduated from Lowndes County High.
He must be a lot older than he seems, since LCHS closed about
1968 when it was combined with Hahira High School to create
Lowndes High School.
He did have a good point, though (paraphrasing):
80% of prisoners are less than 30 years old.
$60,000 a year to keep a person in prison.
$30,000 a year to keep them in college.
His question:
Are you gonna get the parents involved?
Lowndes County Schools Supt. Smith responded that they are working
diligently through Community Partners in Education to do that.
He also talked about Valdosta and Lowndes schools already improving
their graduation rates.
And school, home, and community as three legs of a stool.
Here’s yet another reason the 1% owning and controling everything is
bad for everyone.
Guess which country is the most unequal in income of big countries?
That’s right, the one with by far the most prisoners: the U.S.A.
Prisoners are shown on a log scale, so that’s not just a little bit higher,
it’s about three times higher than Canada or UK.
Why is the USA so high?
It’s not more crime, of the violent homicide and robbery variety.
It’s harsher sentencing, especially for drug-related crimes.
That’s one of many points Richard Wilkinson makes in this
TED Talk from July 2011,
in which he uses hard data to tie income inequality not only to imprisonment,
also to child conflict, drug abuse, infant mortality,
life expectancy, mental illness, obesity, high school dropouts,
teenage births, and social mobility.
The most socially mobile country? Denmark.
The least?
The USA.
Oh yes: we don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia
to make a few CCA executives and shareholders richer at the expense
of the rest of us.
Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.
For the first time ever, a majority of Americans favor legalizing marijuana use,
which is one of the major dangers to CCA’s private prison business plan,
according to CCA itself.
The latest Gallup poll shows a record high of 50 percent of Americans
in favor of legalizing marijuana use. This follows a consistent upward
trend, picking up speed in 2006 when 36 percent of Americans favored
marijuana legalization.
Yes, it’s CCA, the same company that wants to build a private prison in
Lowndes County, Georgia, sued for sexual abuse at its immigration
detention center in Taylor, Texas.
CCA runs the ICE center in Georgia, too.
More than 180 sexual abuse complaints have been reported in immigration
detention centers since 2007, according to government documents obtained
by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a class-action suit
filed this week….
All three women in the ACLU lawsuit were held for a time in the T. Don
Hutto Residiental Center in Taylor, Texas, a 512-bed detention center
privately run on a government contract by private prison giant Corrections
Corporation of America.
The suit targets Corrections Corporation of America along with three
ICE officials, a former facility manager of the Hutto facility, and a
former Hutto guard named Donald Dunn, who was charged last year with
assaulting five women and has been accused of abusing more.
This is also the same CCA that runs a prison in Idaho
commonly known as
Gladiator School because it has twice the rate of assaults
as other prisons in that state.
We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia.
Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.
Dear Andrea, We spoke not long ago by phone. I just want to let you know
that plans to bring in a private prison here are not going to sit well with
many of us. In fact, it will most likely bring about a repeat of the recent
Biomass issue. I don’t mean we are opposed to it. I mean we are vehemently
opposed to it. It seems that Allen Ricketts and the other Board members
don’t understand that Valdosta’s citizens don’t want to be informed of, for
example, what finished products and raw materials will be stored in the
distribution center slated to locate in Valdosta AFTER the contract has been
signed. We have a right to know beforehand what kind of facility it is and
what will be stored there. Informing us after the fact is not transparency.
This is an issue that will continue to be revisited as long as the VLCIA
continues to act unilaterally without considering the wishes of those who
live here. We don’t want to be presented with a fait accompli. Also, the
VLCIA is really not doing due diligence when it continues to court
businesses that raise concerns over the ethical standards of the Board
itself. Thanks. Matt Flumerfelt
A private prison in Lowndes County would be a bad business decision: it would not increase employment, it would be likely to close because of lack of “customers”, and it would drive away knowledge-based workers. The letter I read to the Industrial Authority Board and Staff Tuesday on behalf of some members of the community sumarizes
appended documentation of all those and other points.
If you’d also like to sign, I’m still collecting signatures,
and will periodically drop off more signed copies.
Or, even better, write your own letter and send it to the Industrial Authority.
Submit it to this blog and we’ll probably publish it.
Opposed to a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. —John S. Quarterman
Regular Meeting, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
Norman Bennett, Tom Call, Roy Copeland chairman, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett,
Andrea Schruijer Executive Director, J. Stephen Gupton attorney, Allan Ricketts Project Manager,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 18 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
No Private Prison —John S. Quarterman
We are the 99%,
Marching to Occupy Valdosta, Occupy Valdosta,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 14 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
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.
