Desperation or disaster capitalism by CCA?
Trying to get as entrenched as possible before more people catch
on that private prisons
don’t save money for states?
In exchange for keeping at least a 90 percent occupancy rate, the
private prison company Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has
sent a letter to 48 states offering to manage their prisons for the
low price of $250 million per year, according to a letter obtained
by the Huffington Post.
The company says it’s a way for states to help manage their current
budget crisis. “We believe this comes at a timely and helpful
juncture and hope you will share our belief in the benefits of the
purchase-and-manage model,” CCA chief corrections officer
Harley Lappin said in the letter.
…a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison
would remain at least 90 percent full….
So if a state,
such as Georgia,
was thinking of sentencing reform,
or of getting on with decriminalizing drugs,
either would become quite difficult after signing such contracts.
My darling 22 year-old daughter wound up with a second DWI, because
the first one was a wrist-slap. Don’t hate me as a parent because of
it. But she went to DWI Court in Austin. The year of intense supervision
and no-nonsense attitude and her willingness to not fight it (much)
has turned her attitude and Life around. Did it suck for her? Why,
yes. But, who knows but what it saved someone else’s life? And maybe it
saved her own. I have become a Fan of Very Supervised Probation. If
she’d gone to jail for six months, I suspect she’d have just come out
hating society and gone right back to what put her there.
-Robert Nagle
Presumably this was for driving while intoxicated (DWI) with alcohol.
We tried Prohibition for alcohol back in the 1920s, and repealed it
in the 1930s, because it produced criminal gangs while failing
to stop people from drinking alcohol.
So instead we criminalized the misuse of alcohol such as while driving
and legalized, regulated, and taxed purchase of alcohol.
And now we mostly don’t actually lock people up for DWI:
we put them on supervised probation.
It’s time to do the same for other drugs.
We can’t afford to continue to spend more taxpayer dollars on
locking people up than on education.
Even the Bainbridge and Decatur County Post-Searchlight publishes news about their very own
state legislator explaining one of the biggest reasont why prisons are
a bad bet for a local economy:
because we can’t afford to lock up so many people anymore.
“We’re still struggling to find revenue to pay for operation
of the state government and its services,” Bulloch said.
“We’re going to have to fill holes that we filled during
worse
economic times using federal stimulus money and other temporary
money.”
Bulloch said he also understands Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has
instructed Georgia’s department heads to include 2-percent cuts in
their budget requests for this year.
One way in which legislators might opt to save money is by
streamlining its criminal penal code. According to Bulloch, Georgia
has a very high number of people serving supervised probation or
parole.
“A lot of those people who are in prison or under close
supervision by state officers are serving sentences for non-violent
offenses or minor felonies,” Bulloch said. “We may look
at alternative means for dealing with them, such as creating drug
courts or setting up drug-testing centers that would monitor drug
offenders without imprisoning them.”
Which would mean fewer people in prison.
Which would mean no need for new prisons.
And some existing prisons might close.
Fuentes, Mexico’s greatest writer and a former diplomat, addressed
the contemporary problems of Latin American — in particular,
Mexico’s drug problem.
He said: “The drug traffickers are in Mexico, they send the
drugs to the US and once they get across the border what happens? We
don’t know who consumes them. We can’t prosecute, we can’t defend.
It’s a very difficult situation for us Mexicans. The governments of
the US and Mexico have to fight drug trafficking together.”
Fuentes believes that decriminalising drugs is the only way to end
the violence that in the past five years has claimed nearly 50,000
lives of gang members, security forces and innocent bystanders.
“It is a confrontation. Sometimes we win, sometimes they win.
But there are 50,000 killed and
the relatives of those people
don’t care who is winning.
Nobody is winning except the profiteers in arms and
pesticides, such as
Monsanto.
And even mighty MON is losing to
Boliviana negra.
Alcohol prohibition produced Al Capone and other gangsters;
the failed War on Drugs produced drug gangs and ever more
vicious militarization of police forces,
right up to the Mexican failed “solution” of calling out the Army
into the streets.
We’re all losing through lack of money for education and militarization of our own police.
We can’t afford this costly failed experiment.
The real solution is the same today as in 1933:
legalize, regulate, and tax.
That will also drop the U.S. prison population way down,
saving a lot of money that can be used for education.
It’s going to happen eventually, so building more prisons that will end up being closed is
a bad idea.
The article illustrates what I learned over my 30-year career as a
federal agent: Cracking down in one place doesn’t make drugs
disappear, it only moves the trade elsewhere. This so-called
“balloon effect,” combined with the insatiable demand for drugs
across the globe, means that no level of law-enforcement skill or
dedication can make a significant dent.
The only way to pop the proverbial balloon is to legalize and
regulate the drug trade, which would eliminate the opportunity to
make enormous black-market profits. It wasn’t easy for me to come to
this revelation after dedicating so many years to enforcing drug
laws, but it is common sense. Law-enforcement officers don’t have to
chase gangsters selling booze from town to town because we ended the
failed experiment of alcohol prohibition decades ago. It is time we
do the same for other drugs.
Terry Nelson
Executive Board Member
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
Granbury, Texas
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, JANUARY 23, 2012, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
Staff presented the
agenda item
“7.b. Entrance Gate at Davidson and Roberts Roads”:
Lowndes County received
a $2M grant from the Federal Highway Administration
for construction of a new Moody AFB entrance gate,
the gate to be located located at the intersection of
Davidson and Roberts Roads.
$477,991 of this money has already been taken for the
railroad crossing improvements,
leaving a balance of $1.52 million.
The low bid is from Scruggs Company, $1,648,497.05.
Wait, what?
The low bid is for more than the funds available?
Surely somebody will explain that?
Nope, no discussion. Instead, Commissioner Crawford Powell said:
I’ll make a motion we approve the bid as presented by staff.
Commissioner Evans seconded, and they all voted for it.
Hey, what $128,497.05 discrepancy?
Commission voted for $128,497.05 road cost overrun without discussion @ LCC 2012 Jan 10 Part 1 of 2:
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 10 January 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
If we look at the previous morning’s work session (9 January 2012),
we do find a bit more information.
The grant was presented as involving both the Federal Highway Administration
and Homeland Security, and:
Just like alcohol prohibition produced gansters such as Al Capone,
drug prohibition doesn’t prevent crime: it causes it.
Legalize, tax, and regulate, end that crime,
reduce drug use,
and fund government services.
While massively reducing the prison population and removing any excuse for private prisons.
Sweden is pioneering the way.
Copenhagen’s city municipality voted in recent weeks, 39 votes to 9,
to empower its social affairs committee to draw up a detailed plan to
legalize cannabis.
If that plan is approved by Denmark’s new left-of-centre parliament
next year, the city could become the first to legalize marijuana,
rather than simply tolerate it, as police do in the Netherlands.
“We are thinking of perhaps 30 to 40 public sales houses, where the
people aren’t interested in selling you more, they’re interested
in you,” Mikkel Warming, the mayor in charge of social affairs
at Copenhagen City Council told GlobalPost. “Who is it better for
youngsters to buy marijuana from? A drug pusher, who wants them to use
more, who wants them to buy hard drugs, or a civil servant?”
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?
