{"id":1078,"date":"2012-02-24T09:52:15","date_gmt":"2012-02-24T14:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/crickets-or-what-the-industrial-authority-didnt-say-about-the-private-prison.html"},"modified":"2012-02-24T09:52:15","modified_gmt":"2012-02-24T14:52:15","slug":"crickets-or-what-the-industrial-authority-didnt-say-about-the-private-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/crickets-or-what-the-industrial-authority-didnt-say-about-the-private-prison.html","title":{"rendered":"Crickets, or what the Industrial Authority didn’t say about the private prison"},"content":{"rendered":"Silence speaks volumes.\nYour tax-supported Industrial Authority wants a private prison in\nLowndes County, Georgia.\n

\nAfter \nTuesday’s conversation with VLCIA Executive Director Andrea Schruijer<\/a>,\n\n<\/a>\nI went to Thursday’s Industrial Authority board meeting expecting\nto hear something from the board about the private prison.\nWhat I heard:\n

\nCrickets.\n

\nThe only thing a board member said about it was Chairman Roy Copeland\nreminding me that the board didn’t answer questions in Citizens Wishing\nto be Heard.\n

\nEarlier, Col. Rickets did say that the current contract with CCA\nfor the private prison expires\nMarch 13th<\/sup><\/small>,\nand that meanwhile CCA can either\n\nrequest a third extension<\/a>\nor\nCCA could\n\nsend a Notice to Proceed (NTP) to VLCIA<\/a>\nbefore\nMarch 13th<\/sup><\/small>.\nRemember, CCA has, according to\n\nthe contract<\/a>,\nCCA has\n

\n“absolute discretion”\n<\/blockquote>\nfor issuing that NTP.\n

\nCol. Ricketts added that in staff’s discussions with CCA,\nCCA had indicated they were mulling it over internally, and\nVLCIA should “stand by” for CCA’s next move.\n

\nThat’s right, your local Industrial Authority, whose staff and land purchases\nare funded by your tax dollars, should stand by waiting for a private\nprison company to tell them what to do.\n

\nAnd the Industrial Authority board’s silence is an answer:\nthey said nothing different from their previous vote for the contract\nto bring in this private prison;\nnothing different from their previous acceptance\nof the first and second option extensions;\nand nothing in objection to what Col. Ricketts said.\n

\nSo your tax-supported Industrial Authority wants a private prison in\nLowndes County, Georgia.\n

\nDo you want that?\nDo you want a private prison with fewer guards per prisoner\n\n\nthan a public prison with higher risks of inmate violence and escapes?\nDo you want to pay more to lock people up than it would cost to send them to college?\nDo you want to invest in a private prison when the prison population has peaked and\npeople everywhere are realizing we can’t afford to lock up so many people while cutting\neducation funding?\nDo you want to end up with an empty white elephant prison plant?\nOr, worse, do you want yet another prison in Lowndes County, giving us all the image of a prison colony, driving away the kinds of industry we do want?\nMeanwhile renting out prisoners for practically nothing to compete with local people who need jobs?\nDo you want that?\n

\nIf not, all the same\n\ncontact information for VLCIA<\/a> still works.\nI handed over more paper\n\npetition signatures<\/a> yesterday to Andrea Schruijer.\nChairman Roy Copeland acknowledged earlier in the day in conversation\nthat he knew more signatures kept coming in, and he got some of the telephone\ncalls.\n

\nKeep those calls and signatures and letters going, and maybe the VLCIA\nboard could still change its mind.\nThey’re good at special called meetings, so they could still hold one\nbefore March 13th and say they cancel the contract.\nOr do what they did about the biomass plant, and send a delegation\nto the contracted company and say they want out.\nThey pretended back then not to care about biomass opposition,\nbut we learned they did.\nSo the more objections from the community, the more likely\nthey will do something.\n

\nThat plus maybe it’s time to contact CCA directly.\nWe know \nCCA doesn’t like community opposition and admitted to the SEC\nthat it makes siting a prison difficult.<\/a>\n

\nAnd remember\n\nthe Valdosta City Council and the Lowndes County Commission<\/a>\nare implicated in this private prison decision just as deep as\nthe Industrial Authority.\nRemember \nwho let the cat out of the biomass bag:<\/a>\nCounty Commission Chairman Ashley Paulk.\nWho, by the way, is on the Georgia Board of Corrections,\nso he has influence on prison issues at the state level.\n

\nMore about all that in later posts.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Silence speaks volumes. Your tax-supported Industrial Authority wants a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. After Tuesday’s conversation with VLCIA Executive Director Andrea Schruijer, I went to Thursday’s Industrial Authority board meeting expecting to hear something from the board about the private prison. What I heard: Crickets. The only thing a board member said about […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,120,1113,40,14,15,49,71,8,2,72,3,178,2856],"tags":[3001,8817,8717,8728,8701,8699,8730,7,2745,1297,2744,3002,8700,6,180,8749],"class_list":["post-1078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-biomass","category-cca","category-community","category-economy","category-education","category-elections","category-gdoc","category-georgia","category-government","category-incarceration","category-transparency","category-vlcia","category-vlcia-2012-02-23","tag-absolute-discretion","tag-cca","tag-community","tag-ethics","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-incarceration","tag-lowndes-county","tag-p3","tag-private-prison","tag-public-private-partnership","tag-safey","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-lowndes-county-industrial-authority","tag-vlcia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-ho","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}