{"id":1412,"date":"2011-10-12T13:21:03","date_gmt":"2011-10-12T17:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/do-we-want-a-gladiator-school-prison-in-lowndes-county.html"},"modified":"2011-10-12T13:21:03","modified_gmt":"2011-10-12T17:21:03","slug":"do-we-want-a-gladiator-school-prison-in-lowndes-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/do-we-want-a-gladiator-school-prison-in-lowndes-county.html","title":{"rendered":"Do we want a Gladiator School prison in Lowndes County?"},"content":{"rendered":"Remember \nFBI investigating CCA “Gladiator School”<\/a>,\nthe CCA-run private prison in Idaho the FBI was investigating last year?\nWell, it hasn’t improved much.\nCutting corners for private profit endangers prisoner safety and public\nsafety.\nIs that what we want in Lowndes County, Georgia?\n

\nThe same reporter, Rebecca Boone, wrote again for AP Sunday, almost a year later,\n\nCCA-run prison remains Idaho’s most violent lockup<\/a>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nBOISE, Idaho (AP) \u2014 In the last four years, Idaho’s largest privately\nrun prison has faced federal lawsuits, widespread public scrutiny,\nincreased state oversight, changes in upper management and even an\nongoing FBI investigation.\n

\nYet the Corrections Corp. of America-run Idaho Correctional Center\nremains the most violent lockup in Idaho.\n

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

\nBetween September 2007 and September 2008, both ICC and the state-run\nIdaho State Correctional Institution were medium-security prisons with\nroughly 1,500 inmates each. But during that 12-month span, ICC had\n132 inmate-on-inmate assaults, compared to just 42 at ISCI. In 2008,\nICC had more assaults than all other Idaho prisons combined.\n

\nBy 2010, both prisons had grown with 2,080 inmates at ICC and 1,688\ninmates at ISCI. Records collected by the AP showed that there were 118\ninmate-on-inmate assaults at ICC compared to 38 at ISCI. And again last\nyear, ICC had more assaults than all the other prisons combined.\n<\/blockquote>\nWhat improvement there has been is because multiple inmates filed lawsuits.\n

\nEven so, Idaho renewed and even increased its contract with CCA.\nWith one small improvement:\n\n\n

\nCluney said the state’s new contract with CCA, which went into effect\nin 2009, really helped the Idaho Department of Correction by requiring\nthat CCA follow more IDOC policies. That gave IDOC authority to more\nclosely monitor events at the lockup.\n<\/blockquote>\nIf the state has to do the work for the private prison company,\nwhat advantage is there to the taxpaying public in privatizing prisons?\nI don’t mean the profit advantage to the private prison executives and shareholders; I mean what advantage is there for the taxpayers who are footing the bill?\n

\nRemember how\n\nthe VDT hasn’t gotten hardly anything out of Valdosta State Prison\nabout inmate violence in years of trying?<\/a>\nNow imagine how much harder that would be for a private prison\nthat\n\ndidn’t have to follow any state or federal open records or FOIA laws.<\/a>\n

\nThat Idaho “Gladiator School” contractor is the same CCA that\n\nwants to build a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia.<\/a>\nThe Industrial Authority refers to it as Project Excel,\nand has been promoting it since\n\nat least March 2010<\/a>.\nThat was, by the way, five months before the VDT let the cat out of the\nbag in August 2010 as to what Project Excel was.\n

\nWe don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia, compromising\npublic safety, doing nothing to reduce unemployment,\nand renting out prisoners to compete with private labor.\nSpend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.\n

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