{"id":1864,"date":"2011-06-24T07:34:55","date_gmt":"2011-06-24T11:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/private-prisons-spend-millions-lobbying-to-lock-people-up-justice-policy-institute.html"},"modified":"2011-06-24T07:34:55","modified_gmt":"2011-06-24T11:34:55","slug":"private-prisons-spend-millions-lobbying-to-lock-people-up-justice-policy-institute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/private-prisons-spend-millions-lobbying-to-lock-people-up-justice-policy-institute.html","title":{"rendered":"Private prisons spend millions lobbying to lock people up —Justice Policy Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"Andrea Nill Sanchez wrote 23 June 2011 in ThinkProgress,\n\nPrivate Prisons Spend Millions On Lobbying To Put More People In Jail<\/a>:\n
\n\n<\/a>\nYesterday, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) released\n\na report<\/a>\nchronicling the political strategies of private prison companies\n\u201cworking to make money through harsh policies and longer sentences.\u201d\nThe report\u2019s authors note that while the total number of people in\nprison increased less than 16 percent, the number of people held in\nprivate federal and state facilities increased by 120 and 33 percent,\ncorrespondingly. Government spending on corrections has soared since\n1997 by 72 percent, up to $74 billion in 2007. And the private prison\nindustry has raked in tremendous profits. Last year the two largest\nprivate prison companies \u2014 Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)\nand GEO Group \u2014 made over $2.9 billion in revenue.\n

\nJPI claims the private industry hasn\u2019t merely responded to the\nnation\u2019s incarceration woes, it has actively sought to create the\nmarket conditions (ie. more prisoners) necessary to expand its business.\n<\/blockquote>\nWe already knew that, but JPI has quantified it:\n\n\n

\nAccording to JPI, the private prison industry uses three strategies to\ninfluence public policy: lobbying, direct campaign contributions, and\nnetworking. The three main companies have contributed $835,514 to federal\ncandidates and over $6 million to state politicians. They have also\nspent hundreds of thousands of dollars on direct lobbying efforts. CCA\nhas spent over $900,000 on federal lobbying and GEO spent anywhere from\n$120,000 to $199,992 in Florida alone during a short three-month span\nthis year. Meanwhile, \u201cthe relationship between government officials\nand private prison companies has been part of the fabric of the industry\nfrom the start,\u201d notes the report. The cofounder of CCA himself used\nto be the chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party.\n<\/blockquote>\nSpeaking of networking, we know from CCA’s own website that\nGeorgia is CCA’s model partner.<\/a>\n

\nSo, how much have CCA and GEO spent on Georgia campaigns?\n

\nMeanwhile, we don’t need to enrich CCA’s executives and shareholders any more.\nWe don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia.\nSpend that tax money on rehabilitation and education instead.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrea Nill Sanchez wrote 23 June 2011 in ThinkProgress, Private Prisons Spend Millions On Lobbying To Put More People In Jail: Yesterday, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) released a report chronicling the political strategies of private prison companies \u201cworking to make money through harsh policies and longer sentences.\u201d The report\u2019s authors note that while the […]","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":[97,1113,14,49,2,19,1381,72,178],"tags":[8817,1153,8705,8701,8709,8730,4317,4316,963,7,8712,75,1297,220,8758,8749],"class_list":["post-1864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-cca","category-economy","category-elections","category-government","category-history","category-immigration","category-incarceration","category-vlcia","tag-cca","tag-corruption","tag-education","tag-georgia","tag-history","tag-incarceration","tag-jpi","tag-justice-policy-institute","tag-lobbying","tag-lowndes-county","tag-politics","tag-prison","tag-private-prison","tag-regulatory-capture","tag-science","tag-vlcia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-u4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1864","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=1864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1864\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}