Tag Archives: Valdosta State Prison

What are REZ-2014-15 and Hahira’s Extraterritorial Request? @ LCC 2014-09-08

300x268 Location map, in GP Investments, by John S. Quarterman, 8 September 2014 Public hearings with no details: how is the public to know to show up? Why no description at all for “Rezoning case REZ-2014-15”? And no identifying number for the next case? And why the extra obscurity about “Hahira’s Extraterritorial Request”? This agenda goes beyond brief into opaque. LAKE can answer two of these questions because Gretchen went to the Planning Commission meeting and photographed that agenda that Lowndes County refuses to even publish. But why should the taxpayers be left guessing about what their only elected county-wide government is doing?

Also two appointments: the Planning Commission’s recommendation to replace its departing young black woman member with an old white man and somebody unnamed to the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities Plus the annual renewal of hiring prisoners from Valdosta State Prison.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2014, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2014, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
Continue reading →

Prisoners with Guards @ LCC 2013-07-22

State prisoners deal with water issues for Lowndes County said Public Works Director Robin Cumbus Robin Cumbus at the Monday 22 July 2013 Lowndes County Commission Work Session; they vote tonight.

7.a. Prison Detail Contracts

Three details at $39,500 each, no increase from last year, said Public Works Director Robin Cumbus.

Commissioner Demarcus Marshall wanted to know if that was three times a year. Continue reading →

Prisoners as cheap labor

Quite likely you thought massive prison populations used as cheap labor were some sort of medieval tradition. Nope. Here’s an article that debunks that misconception and informs you about many other things I (and perhaps you) didn’t know about prisoners as cheap labor.

Locking Down an American Workforce Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman wrote for TomDispatch 19 April 2012, Prison Labor as the Past — and Future — of American “Free-Market” Capitalism,

Penal servitude now strikes us as a barbaric throwback to some long-lost moment that preceded the industrial revolution, but in that we’re wrong. From its first appearance in this country, it has been associated with modern capitalist industry and large-scale agriculture.

So where and when did it come from?

As it happens, penal servitude — the leasing out of prisoners to private enterprise, either within prison walls or in outside workshops, factories, and fields — was originally known as a “Yankee invention.”

First used at Auburn prison in New York State in the 1820s, the system spread widely and quickly throughout the North, the Midwest, and later the West. It developed alongside state-run prison workshops that produced goods for the public sector and sometimes the open market.

A few Southern states also used it. Prisoners there, as elsewhere, however, were mainly white men, since slave masters, with a free hand to deal with the “infractions” of their chattel, had little need for prison. The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery would, in fact, make an exception for penal servitude precisely because it had become the dominant form of punishment throughout the free states.

In case you’ve never read it or have forgotten, here is the Thirteenth Amendment (emphasis added):

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Got a population you don’t like? Continue reading →

Do we want a Gladiator School prison in Lowndes County?

Remember FBI investigating CCA “Gladiator School”, the CCA-run private prison in Idaho the FBI was investigating last year? Well, it hasn’t improved much. Cutting corners for private profit endangers prisoner safety and public safety. Is that what we want in Lowndes County, Georgia?

The same reporter, Rebecca Boone, wrote again for AP Sunday, almost a year later, CCA-run prison remains Idaho’s most violent lockup

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — In the last four years, Idaho’s largest privately run prison has faced federal lawsuits, widespread public scrutiny, increased state oversight, changes in upper management and even an ongoing FBI investigation.

Yet the Corrections Corp. of America-run Idaho Correctional Center remains the most violent lockup in Idaho.

Records obtained by The Associated Press show that while the assault rate improved somewhat in the four-year period examined, ICC inmates are still more than twice as likely to be assaulted as those at other Idaho prisons.

Between September 2007 and September 2008, both ICC and the state-run Idaho State Correctional Institution were medium-security prisons with roughly 1,500 inmates each. But during that 12-month span, ICC had 132 inmate-on-inmate assaults, compared to just 42 at ISCI. In 2008, ICC had more assaults than all other Idaho prisons combined.

By 2010, both prisons had grown with 2,080 inmates at ICC and 1,688 inmates at ISCI. Records collected by the AP showed that there were 118 inmate-on-inmate assaults at ICC compared to 38 at ISCI. And again last year, ICC had more assaults than all the other prisons combined.

What improvement there has been is because multiple inmates filed lawsuits.

Even so, Idaho renewed and even increased its contract with CCA. With one small improvement: Continue reading →

If public prisons are bad, what about private prisons?

If the VDT can’t get a public prison already in Lowndes County to comply with Georgia’s quite strong open records law even with years of requests, why would we want a private prison in Lowndes County, which wouldn’t have any open records requirements at all?

Dean Poling and Kay Harris wrote a long article about weapons in prisons for the VDT 28 August 2011, An eye for an eye: Life behind bars, concluding:

Inmates are intelligent. All they have is time. Why? Because there is no rehabilitation anymore. They are merely being housed. The prison programs don’t work, especially for lifers with nothing else to lose. So they have plenty of time to figure out ways to beat the system.
The VDT has been trying to find out more since at least 2009, when Malynda Fulton wrote 9 November 2009, Department of Corrections says records are ‘state secrets’ or destroyed, Continue reading →

Sounds like trouble is brewing down I-75. —Jim Galloway

What’s even more secretive than the Industrial Authority? Valdosta State Prison!

The AJC has noticed

Sounds like trouble is brewing down I-75. —Jim Galloway
that the VDT is getting serious about open records requests:
The Valdosta Daily Times’ Open Records request concerning violent incidents in the Valdosta State Prison was denied Monday.

The Department of Corrections (DOC) denied all requests in the Times’ Open Records filing, stating that, under Georgia law, the documents do not have to be released.

After receiving phone calls from concerned individuals who have knowledge of recent violent prison attacks, the Times submitted the Open Records request to Department of Corrections Commissioner Brian Owens.

Kay Harris wrote that in the VDT today.

Curiously, the state doesn’t even provide a picture of the prison.

It’s enough to make you wonder what they have to hide.

Apparently the VDT wonders: Continue reading →