{"id":1782,"date":"2011-07-10T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-10T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/a-conflict-of-interest-at-its-core-church-group-on-private-prisons.html"},"modified":"2011-07-10T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-07-10T12:00:00","slug":"a-conflict-of-interest-at-its-core-church-group-on-private-prisons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/a-conflict-of-interest-at-its-core-church-group-on-private-prisons.html","title":{"rendered":"“a conflict of interest at its core” —church group on private prisons"},"content":{"rendered":"Another Sunday, another church group against private prisons.\nThis time, it includes ex-prisoners, and it went to the lion’s den:\na CCA shareholder meeting.\n

\nMarian Wright Edelman wrote 13 December 2010,\n\nStrength to Love: A Challenge to the Private Prison Industry<\/a>:\n

\n\n<\/a>\nA few months ago a group of earnest and determined stockholders traveled\ntogether by bus from Washington, D.C., to Nashville, Tennessee, to\nattend a shareholders\u2019 meeting for the Corrections Corporation of\nAmerica (CCA), the largest private prison company in the country. The\ngroup included ex-offenders who now each hold one share of stock in the\nsame prison company that once held them captive, and they attended the\nmeeting in the hopes of sharing their perspective on how the privatized\nprison industry can better serve society by rehabilitating inmates,\nrather than just serving its own profits by perpetuating the prison cycle.\n

\nThe group, part of Washington, D.C.\u2019s Church of the Saviour, is named\nStrength to Love, after the title of one of Dr. Martin Luther King,\nJr.\u2019s sermon collections. Members explain their mission this way:\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

\n

\n

\n\u201cThe privatized, for-profit prison industry is particularly plagued\nby a conflict of interest at its core: On the one hand, the industry\nis responsible to its shareholders to make money, and its income is\ndetermined by how many beds are filled. On the other hand, its civil\nresponsibility to the inmates and to the whole of society is to help\nincarcerated people become their intended selves, and to prepare them\nto succeed upon release. It is well established that services and\nprograms like job training and education serve to lower the occurrence\nof re-offense. But it is better for the company\u2019s bottom line to\nminimize staff and services, let the inmates succeed or fail on their\nown terms, and reap the financial benefits of strict sentencing laws\nand high rates of recidivism. It is this experience of exploitation,\nfrequently referred to as a modern day form of slavery, that many members\nof Strength to Love have personally experienced, and which we have been\ncalled to dismantle.\u201d\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\nThey’re\non the web<\/a>\nand\n\non facebook<\/a>.\n

\nPeople in Lowndes County, Georgia could do this.\nIt would be better than building a private prison here.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another Sunday, another church group against private prisons. This time, it includes ex-prisoners, and it went to the lion’s den: a CCA shareholder meeting. Marian Wright Edelman wrote 13 December 2010, Strength to Love: A Challenge to the Private Prison Industry: A few months ago a group of earnest and determined stockholders traveled together by […]","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":[97,1113,1381,72,1908,178],"tags":[8817,2858,8701,2696,2695,7,2838,8845,75,1297,4140,8749],"class_list":["post-1782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-cca","category-immigration","category-incarceration","category-religion","category-vlcia","tag-cca","tag-corrections-corporation-of-america","tag-georgia","tag-injustice","tag-justice","tag-lowndes-county","tag-martin-luther-king-jr","tag-mlk","tag-prison","tag-private-prison","tag-strength-to-love","tag-vlcia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-sK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782","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=1782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}