Tag Archives: Valdosta

Georgia prison population plummetting

In two years, the legislature went from denial to doing something about the unsupportable costs of Georgia’s prison system. The Georgia prison population is already plumetting, and will drop more. This makes a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia an even worse business deal. If it ever opens, it probably will close.

Two years ago the Georgia legislature was in denial, as Carrie Teegardin wrote for the AJC 4 April 2010, Georgia prison population, costs on rise,

As Georgia lawmakers desperately search for ways to slash spending, they are not debating an option taken by other states: cutting the prison population.

Georgia operates the fifth-largest prison system in the nation, at a cost of $1 billion a year. The job of overseeing 60,000 inmates and 150,000 felons on probation consumes 1 of every 17 state dollars.

The state’s prison population has jumped by more than a quarter in the past decade and officials expect the number of state inmates to continue to creep upward. Georgia has resorted to measures other than reducing the prison population to keep corrections spending under control.

19 months later, things had changed, as the Atlanta Business Chronic reported 15 December 2011, BJS: Georgia prison population drops in 2010, Continue reading →

ACLU and 60 policy and religious groups ask states to reject CCA’s prison privatization offer

What do the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, The Sentencing Project, the NAACP, and the Southern Poverty Law Center have in common? They all want states to reject CCA’s offer to 48 states to buy prisons. Right here in Lowndes County, our Industrial Authority wants to go one better for CCA and help build a shiny fresh new private prison with our tax dollars.

PR from yesterday, ACLU Urges States to Reject CCA Offer to Privatize Prisons,

The American Civil Liberties Union and a broad coalition of 60 policy and religious groups today urged states to reject a recent offer by the nation’s largest private prison company to buy and privatize state prisons.

In a letter sent to governors in every state, the ACLU and 26 other organizations said a recent offer by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) to buy prisons currently run by state officials is a backdoor invitation to take on additional debt while increasing CCA’s profits and impeding the serious criminal justice reforms needed to combat the nation’s mass incarceration crisis.

Two similar letters are also being sent today by religious coalitions to governors. One of the letters, sent by 32 faith groups including the United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society, the United Church of Christ/Justice and Witness Ministries, the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Public Witness, says there is a moral imperative in reducing incarceration through evidence-based alternatives to imprisonment and re-entry policies that ease the transition of prisoners back into society. A third letter, from the Presbyterian Criminal Justice Network, argues that the principles of mercy, forgiveness, redemption and reconciliation are largely absent from the private prison industry.

“Selling off prisons to CCA would be a tragic mistake for your state,” the ACLU’s letter reads. “[CCA’s] proposal is an invitation to fiscal irresponsibility, prisoner abuse and decreased public safety. It should be promptly declined.”

You can help decline CCA’s private prison in Lowndes County.

-jsq

Motorcade against CCA, 5PM Tuesday March 6th

Do you want to live in a prison colony? Help us say, CCA Go Away!

Join us 5PM Tuesday March 6th 2012 at the private prison site (Dasher-Johnson Road off US 84 at Inner Perimeter) for a motorcade by Valdosta City Hall to the Industrial Authority offices: for education and against the private prison.

When:5PM (rush hour) Tuesday March 6th
How:Cars, trucks, motorcycles, and bicycles
Who:Everybody is invited
What:Oppose the Private Prison
From:Proposed Private Prison Site
US 84 @ Inner Perimeter Road
(Staging on Dasher-Johnson Road next to US 84)
By way of:Valdosta City Hall
Valdosta City Council Work Session
Honk to say No CCA!
To:Industrial Authority Office
2110 N. Patterson Street
(Patterson at Park Avenue)
Bring a sign: No Private Prisons!
Contact: noprivateprisons@gmail.com
Winn Roberson, 229-630-2339, winnroberson@bellsouth.net
John S. Quarterman, 229-242-0102, politics@quarterman.org



on the web


View Larger Map


Petition

Winn Roberson read the newspaper Friday (February 24th) and realized the prison site was down the street from him, so the news finally sunk in. This motorcade was his idea to drive the point across to the Industrial Authority: we don’t want a private prison!

John S. Quarterman lives about as far away from the prison site as you can get in Lowndes County, but realizes it will affect everybody for many counties around. So let’s say CCA Go Away!

-jsq

PS: If you can’t come, you can still sign the petition to the Industrial Authority, or write a letter to the editor, or…

CCA private prison VDT front page today

Former Sheriff Paulk luke-warm; Sheriff Prine completely opposed. Water and sewer, wetlands, federal funding: all hurdles, says Paulk. Sheriff’s Association also opposed, says Prine. More in the VDT article.

Lowndes County Sheriff Chris Prine has also shared his thoughts on the private prison industry:
“If I’m going to house an inmate and if I’m going to be responsible, I’d rather them be in my facility not a private prison,” said Prine. “If I’m going to be responsible for them I want them to be within my reach. the Sheriff’s Association feels the same way I do. I’d say the large majority of Sheriff’s feel the same way about this. I don’t want a private facility handling my prisoners.”
Here’s video of Sheriff Prine saying most of that a few weeks ago.

They also mentioned the petition and quoted me:

“If those signatures and calls are making any impression on the Authority they certainly don’t admit to it,” said Quarterman. “This is another Lofton (Brad Lofton, former Authority executive director) project. It’d be nice if the Industrial Authority represented the community they were located in.”
Do you want the Industrial Authority to notice? You can sign the the petition, or send VLCIA your own letter, or write a letter to the editor to the VDT, or….

-jsq

County Commission votes tonight

Yesterday morning’s Lowndes County Commission work session lasted only eight (8) minutes, as you can see in the videos. Maybe they will say more tonight.

Here’s the agenda.

-jsq

Videos of Lowndes County Commission Work Session 2012 02 27

Lowndes County Board of Commissioners Work Session Meeting held February 27, 2012, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia. Here’s the agenda.

Here’s a playlist:


Videos of Lowndes County Commission Work Session 2012 02 27
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 27 February 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

6c. Statewide Mutual Aid Agreement @ LCC Work Session 2012-02-27

Lowndes County has been in a Mutual Aid Agreement for 10 years. This is a renewal of the agreement for 4 years. Having this agreement in place makes cooperating with neighboring counties and municipalities easier.

-gretchen

Here’s the video:


6c. Statewide Mutual Aid Agreement @ LCC Work Session 2012-02-27
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 27 February 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

I didn’t see any commissioners object this time. Instead they didn’t say anything at all. We’ll see tomorrow. Some context in this previous post. Plus this appears to be the actual agreement on the GEMA website.

-jsq

Georgia Power peddling old disinformation about solar power

On the same day as SB 401 revived as SB 459 gets a hearing in a better committee, Georgia Power trots out the same old tired disinformation it’s been peddling for years. As if we didn’t already know that almost all solar installations in Georgia are installed by certified solar installers. Or that pretty much every inverter these days comes with built-in automatic cutoff if the grid goes down to which installers add air-gap cutoff knife switches plus breakers. And as if Georgia Power didn’t know it and EMCs could charge a percentage on electricity arbitraged across their networks, which gapower could use to finance any needed grid improvements, while retaining a hefty profit for doing not much of anything else. Meanwhile, those of us who chose to participate in solar electricity arbitrage would get lower rates for customers. We do know all that, but maybe your state senator doesn’t, so maybe you should call your senator today and tell them you want to be able to buy and sell solar power without having to get it from the utility monopoly.

Greg Roberts, Vice President of Pricing and Planning for Georgia Power in Atlanta, wrote for the Savannah Morning News today, The solar sleight of hand. I’ll only quote part of his concluding paragraph.

Georgia Power is involved in many efforts to expand the use solar energy
Usually dragged along behind reluctantly, Continue reading →

Corrections Corporation of America: A Critical Look at its First Twenty Years

This is the report Bobbi A. Hancock gave Andrea Schruijer Friday:

Grassroots Leadership published Correction Corporation of America: A Critical Look at its First Twenty Years. By Philip Mattera and Mafruza Khan, Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First, and Stephen Nathan, Prison Privatisation Report International. December, 2003. Here’s an extract from the Executive Summary:
CCA is the leading participant in, and in many ways the embodiment of, one of the most controversial industries ever created—the incarceration of people for profit. While the company is looking back through rose-colored glasses, there is a need for a critical analysis of what CCA has brought to the world of corrections. That is the purpose of this report.

Even by its own standards, CCA has not been a success. Rather than taking the industry by storm, it still manages only about three percent of prison and jail beds in the United States, and its global aspirations had to be abandoned.

Only a few years ago, CCA was being widely vilified

Continue reading →

Community activism had nothing to do with biomass plant not coming here —Andrea Schruijer to Bobbi A. Hancock

Received today. -jsq
Subject: Meeting with Andrea

Just a quick recap of a meeting I had yesterday with VLCIA’s Andrea Schruijer. When asked where we were with the private prison issue, she responded, “we contractually agreed to a 3rd extension with a term of 365 and CCA has until March 13, 2012 to request that extension.” So I asked,” if CCA doesn’t request a 3rd extension, then the issue is over, right?” She replied, “If there’s no response from CCA, then it is up to the board to determine how to move forward.” When I asked her why they would even consider honoring a contract extension to CCA knowing some of the controversy over CCA’s business practices, she replied, “because there is a partnership between the VLCIA and CCA and we are contractually bound to a 3rd extension.”

I pointed out that the private prison industry wasn’t interested in public safety and rehabilitation they simply wanted to make a quick buck off the lives of others. I informed her of the chronic employee turnover, understaffing, high rates of violence and extreme cost cutting which all have been attributed to CCA.

I told her that Lowndes County already had its own share of air pollution and that amount of air pollution here is directly proportionate to the amount of lung and bronchial caner in our area. I encouraged her to consider sustainable businesses for the future economic growth of our community, not smoke stack business. Her reply, “so what you are saying is that you think the industrial should just close its doors?” I actually hadn’t thought about that but the question did make me ponder.

I left her with a 91 page research report which takes a critical look at the first twenty years of CCA’s operations. I requested an email response of her thoughts about the report and am currently awaiting the response…

Biomass did come up in the conversation and Mrs. Schruijer was quick to assert that

Continue reading →