{"id":1609,"date":"2011-08-23T12:26:54","date_gmt":"2011-08-23T16:26:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/private-prisons-unaccountable-aclu.html"},"modified":"2011-08-23T12:26:54","modified_gmt":"2011-08-23T16:26:54","slug":"private-prisons-unaccountable-aclu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/private-prisons-unaccountable-aclu.html","title":{"rendered":"Private prisons unaccountable —ACLU"},"content":{"rendered":"Found on the\nACLU blog of rights<\/a>.\n

\n\nAzadeh Shahshahani<\/a> wrote for the AJC 11 June 2009,\n\nPrivate prisons for immigrants lack accountability, oversight<\/a>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nOn March 11, a 39-year-old man held in detention at the Stewart Detention\nCenter, a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in\nsouthwest Georgia, died at a hospital in Columbus.\n<\/blockquote>\nThat’s in Lumpkin, west of Americus, south of Columbus.\n
\nTo this day, the immediate cause of Roberto Martinez Medina\u2019s death\nremains unclear (a press release pronounced the cause of death as\n\u201capparent natural causes\u201d).\n

\n\n<\/a>\nLast month, Leonard Odom, 37, died at the Wheeler County Correctional\nFacility in south-central Georgia.\n<\/blockquote>\nThat’s in Alamo, GA, between Macon, Tifton, and Savannah.\n

\nBoth facilities are operated by Corrections Corp. of America, which\nhas a contract with the Department of Homeland Security to operate the\nStewart center and one with the Georgia Department of Corrections to\noperate the one in Wheeler County.\n<\/blockquote>\nSo, what happened?\n\n\n
\nThe DOC has not released additional information about the death of Odom,\ndue to an ongoing investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.\n

\nWhat sets apart the deaths of these two men held at CCA-operated\nfacilities is the difference in official responses.\n

\nIn the case of the death at the immigration detention facility, there\nhave been no further explanations regarding what may have prompted the\ndeath \u2014 much less an official investigation by Immigration and Customs\nEnforcement, which was created as a part of Homeland Security in 2003\nto consolidate immigration enforcement.\n<\/blockquote>\nThat’s right, we don’t know.\n

\n\n<\/a>\nJust like even the VDT\n\ncan’t find out what’s going on at Valdosta State Prison.<\/a>\nMaybe we should \nsend the GA legislature some suggestions for their 30 August hearing<\/a>\non open meetings and open records.\n

\nHow bad is it?\n

\nFrom October 2003 through Feb. 7, 2009, 18 people died in immigration\ndetention custody in facilities operated by CCA alone, according to\ninformation from The New York Times.\n

\nYet ICE has failed repeatedly to hold CCA accountable. Instead, the\nfederal agency continues to reward CCA with additional contracts,\nmost recently for operation of the North Georgia Detention Center in\nHall County.\n<\/blockquote>\nThat’s around 4 CCA prison deaths a year, which beats\nabout 2 a year in the\nLowndes County jail.<\/a>\nProbably CCA has a lot more prisoners locked up, so that’s not surprising.\nHowever, it goes to show that privatizing prisons doesn’t look like\nmuch of a way to improve prisoner safety.\nAnd unsafe prisoners are unsafe for the general public, because\nthey’ll try harder to escape.\n

\n\n<\/a>\nAzadeh Shahshahani is the National Security\/ Immigrants’ Rights Project\ndirector for the ACLU of Georgia and chairs Georgia Detention Watch.\n<\/blockquote>\nYes, I am a card-carrying ACLU member. Aren’t you?\n

\nAnd we don’t need a CCA private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia.\nSpend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Found on the ACLU blog of rights. Azadeh Shahshahani wrote for the AJC 11 June 2009, Private prisons for immigrants lack accountability, oversight On March 11, a 39-year-old man held in detention at the Stewart Detention Center, a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in southwest Georgia, died at a hospital in Columbus. That’s […]","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":[176,97,1113,40,15,71,2,1381,72,3,133,178],"tags":[8747,3907,3896,3895,8817,2858,3010,3908,8701,2907,3900,3009,1264,8830,3892,8730,3909,3911,7,3419,3899,1297,3910,3416,2900,8742],"class_list":["post-1609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aclu","category-activism","category-cca","category-community","category-education","category-gdoc","category-government","category-immigration","category-incarceration","category-transparency","category-vdt","category-vlcia","tag-aclu","tag-alamo","tag-american-civil-liberties-union","tag-azadeh-shahshahani","tag-cca","tag-corrections-corporation-of-america","tag-dhs","tag-doc","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-department-of-corrections","tag-georgia-detention-watch","tag-homeland-security","tag-ice","tag-immigration","tag-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","tag-incarceration","tag-jail-deaths","tag-leonard-odom","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lumpkin","tag-prison-deaths","tag-private-prison","tag-roberto-martinez-medina","tag-stewart-detention-center","tag-valdosta-daily-times","tag-vdt"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-pX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609","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=1609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}