Yet the reality is that private prison lobbyists regularly buy influence
with state and federal officials, not only to win lucrative contracts,
but also to change or preserve policies that increase the number of
people behind bars. Private companies have made huge profits off the mass
incarceration of non-violent drug offenders, and are now turning their
attention to increasing the detention of Latino immigrants—the newest
profit center for the prison industrial complex. Ultimately there is no
way to reverse the costly trend toward mass incarceration without reducing
the influence of these companies and their money in our democracy.
Earlier this year in Louisiana, a plan by Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) to
privatize prisons narrowly failed in a legislative committee by a vote
of 13 to 12. The 12 members of the House Appropriations Committee who
voted to approve the prison privatization plan have received more than
three times more money from private prison donors than the 13 members
who voted against the plan, according to an analysis of data from the
Louisiana Ethics Administration and the National Institute on Money in
State Politics. Gov. Jindal himself has taken nearly $30,000 from the
private prison industry.
And of course in Georgia there’s HB 87, which isn’t really about
excluding immigrants;
Continue reading →
That’s $1 a day in pay and $5 a telephone minute.
While CCA is collecting as much as $200 a day per inmate
in your tax dollars and CCA’s CEO is compensated $3,266,387
from your tax dollars.
Last year the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s
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.
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?
By now you’ve probably seen the video of UC Davis police pepper spraying peaceful protesters who were simply sitting on the gorund.
But have you seen what happened next?
Police were forming up with weapons raised surrounded on three sides by protesters, when someone yelled “Mic check!”
Follow
this link.
Or, if you want to see it starting with the pepper spraying:
The one with the two pepper spray cans appears to be the same police
lieutenant who pepper sprayed the protesters.
As the protesters say through the human microphone that they are
willing to let the police just walk away, even after the police
had assaulted them with pepper spray,
that same lieutenant motions to the police, who lower their weapons
and back away.
In the last few weeks, our community has seen an unprecedented effort from
left, right, and center, city and county, town and gown, all working
Let us not focus on the things that have divided us in the past,
but rather use this opportunity to build a stronger community,
a stronger education system.
together as a community to achieve a goal that the overwhelming
majority see as in our best interest.
We have an opportunity that we should not squander.
It doesn’t take a lot of money. It takes dedicated people, calling their
friends and neighbors, canvasing every neighborhood, holding open and honest
forums, and answering questions to the very best of their ability.
Let us not focus on the things that have divided us in the past,
but rather use this opportunity to build a stronger community,
a stronger education system.
Let us find opportunities to work together to benefit our students,
teachers, police, firefighters, farmers, small local businesses and
all the rest of us who call this community home.
We have an opportunity that we should not squander.
Let us work as one community for the benefit of all our
citizens; students, seniors, family, friends, urban, rural,
conservatives, progressives, Wildcats and Vikings.
One community out of many, with liberty and justice for all.
Gretchen Quarterman
Chairman
Lowndes County Democratic Party
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.
We, the local citizens occupying Valdosta, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; to nonviolently occupy
public space;
to create an open process to address the problems we face, and to generate
solutions accessible to everyone.
Georgia’s pardons board rejected a last-ditch clemency plea from death
row inmate Troy Davis on Tuesday despite high-profile support from figures
including the pope and
a former FBI director for the claim that he was
wrongly convicted of killing a police officer in 1989.
Davis is scheduled to die Wednesday by injection for the killing of
off-duty Savannah officer Mark MacPhail, who was slain while rushing to
help a homeless man being attacked. It is the fourth time in four years
that Davis’ execution has been scheduled by Georgia officials.
Steve Hayes, spokesman for the Board of Pardons and Paroles, said
Possibly the last thing Gov. Nathan Deal expected to find at Valdosta
State University greeted him: student protesters!
Their main question was about the impending Sept. 21st execution of
Troy Anthony Davis,
about whom Amnesty International says there is too much doubt.
Student protesters greet Governor Nathan Deal at Valdosta State University, 16 Sep 2011.
Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Another Sunday, another church group against private prisons.
This time, it includes ex-prisoners, and it went to the lion’s den:
a CCA shareholder meeting.
A 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:
Yet the reality is that private prison lobbyists regularly buy influence with state and federal officials, not only to win lucrative contracts, but also to change or preserve policies that increase the number of people behind bars. Private companies have made huge profits off the mass incarceration of non-violent drug offenders, and are now turning their attention to increasing the detention of Latino immigrants—the newest profit center for the prison industrial complex. Ultimately there is no way to reverse the costly trend toward mass incarceration without reducing the influence of these companies and their money in our democracy.
