Oh look! Investment banks getting in on the piece of the pie from the government!
"In Florida alone, 29 state prisons are set to be privatised. This represents the largest prison privatisation programme in US history, according to Tobey Sommer, an analyst covering the private prison market at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, an investment bank based in Atlanta."
In the article it mentioned I believe something along the lines of what happens when the number of inmates coming into the system declines. Then the prisons start to lose money...then what? Shuts down? I am not for private company running prisons. Do they do it a lot in other countries? Seems like the government charges you, sentences you, should then also imprison you.
Now you are going to see more corruption in the judicial system. Shady cases being found guilty anyway..probably for the poor since all they can get are public defenders. Throw em in the prison and keep those prison owners happy! Its like trading stock but you are trading people from one market to the other. Gotta love how crack carried a much longer prison sentence than just regular powder cocaine..same thing but totally different sentencing guidelines. Not that THAT had anything to do with the private prison issue. That was just more getting them off the streets and into cell blocks away from everyone else. I still have issues with DUI checkpoints being allowed.
-------------------- It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so. Posts: 6949 | Registered: Apr 2004
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"Now you are going to see more corruption in the judicial system. Shady cases being found guilty anyway..probably for the poor since all they can get are public defenders."
I'm not following your train of thought Moo. It seems like you're saying that privatization = jury tampering? Why would more lower income people be found guilty under a private system than now? Somehow the fact that a corporation is running the prison system will mean that jurors are no longer impartial? Makes no sense to me.
Posts: 5729 | From: Wisconsin | Registered: Sep 2003
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It actually makes a lot of sense. Do you remember the corrupt judge that got in trouble for sentencing juveniles to a private prison...just by rubber stamping the cases?
Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit
"The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care."
I am not saying the JURY will be impacted. I am saying it could be very easy for money to be shuffled around for hidden kickbacks for tough sentencing in order to fill up the jails or prisons. Lower income people have always had a tougher time in courts with public defenders because they can not afford the best legal defense they can get. I mean, everyone knows how that one goes. Plus they dont have the money to appeal a shady ruling so if they get stuck in a prison they have little chance.
Of course the system is abused, and people who ARE guilty try to weasel their way out. It is not the most perfect system in the world but it is the best out there.
-------------------- It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so. Posts: 6949 | Registered: Apr 2004
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we have good jail system here in MS, the convicts are out and about every day picking up trash and doing landscaping at the library and such... they look so happy too
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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I wish more states would do that glass. You have some people who say its inhumane to put prisoners to work like that. Obviously, liberals who think like that.
-------------------- It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so. Posts: 6949 | Registered: Apr 2004
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You know over the years jordan I remember people saying how its inhumane, and it violates prisoners rights. The usual crap.
I actually think making prisoners work...especially to pay off court fines and costs should be used even more. Hell, before you know there will be a "local 489 prison workers" union lmao.
-------------------- It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so. Posts: 6949 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Prisoners should not do city,county,state or federal work because it takes jobs away from honest American citizens.
As for is it good for prisoners the answer is yes, it is great for them as would entertainment be also, so would carpeted cells.They are employed they do take care of the prison. And nobody should abuse the prisoners for any reason.
If anybody is interested, prison labor is a ten billion dollar a year industry from the last report I read over 7 years ago,must be more now. How would you like to compete in the same areas of business with prison labor pay scales.
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise. Posts: 3827 | From: beautiful California | Registered: Sep 2008
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HISTORY OF PRISON LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES
Prison labor has its roots in slavery. After the 1861-1865 Civil War, a system of "hiring out prisoners" was introduced in order to continue the slavery tradition. Freed slaves were charged with not carrying out their sharecropping commitments (cultivating someone else's land in exchange for part of the harvest) or petty thievery - which were almost never proven - and were then "hired out" for cotton picking, working in mines and building railroads. From 1870 until 1910 in the state of Georgia, 88% of hired-out convicts were Black. In Alabama, 93% of "hired-out" miners were Black. In Mississippi, a huge prison farm similar to the old slave plantations replaced the system of hiring out convicts. The notorious Parchman plantation existed until 1972.
During the post-Civil War period, Jim Crow racial segregation laws were imposed on every state, with legal segregation in schools, housing, marriages and many other aspects of daily life. "Today, a new set of markedly racist laws is imposing slave labor and sweatshops on the criminal justice system, now known as the prison industry complex," comments the Left Business Observer.
Who is investing? At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom's, Revlon, Macy's, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call "highly skilled positions." At those rates, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal prisons to be very generous. There, they can earn $1.25 an hour and work eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime. They can send home $200-$300 per month.
Thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive location for investment in work that was designed for Third World labor markets. A company that operated a maquiladora (assembly plant in Mexico near the border) closed down its operations there and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California. In Texas, a factory fired its 150 workers and contracted the services of prisoner-workers from the private Lockhart Texas prison, where circuit boards are assembled for companies like IBM and Compaq.
[Former] Oregon State Representative Kevin Mannix recently urged Nike to cut its production in Indonesia and bring it to his state, telling the shoe manufacturer that "there won't be any transportation costs; we're offering you competitive prison labor (here)."
PRIVATE PRISONS
The prison privatization boom began in the 1980s, under the governments of Ronald Reagan and Bush Sr., but reached its height in 1990 under William Clinton, when Wall Street stocks were selling like hotcakes. Clinton's program for cutting the federal workforce resulted in the Justice Departments contracting of private prison corporations for the incarceration of undocumented workers and high-security inmates.
Private prisons are the biggest business in the prison industry complex. About 18 corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states. The two largest are Correctional Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut, which together control 75%. Private prisons receive a guaranteed amount of money for each prisoner, independent of what it costs to maintain each one. According to Russell Boraas, a private prison administrator in Virginia, "the secret to low operating costs is having a minimal number of guards for the maximum number of prisoners." The CCA has an ultra-modern prison in Lawrenceville, Virginia, where five guards on dayshift and two at night watch over 750 prisoners. In these prisons, inmates may get their sentences reduced for "good behavior," but for any infraction, they get 30 days added - which means more profits for CCA. According to a study of New Mexico prisons, it was found that CCA inmates lost "good behavior time" at a rate eight times higher than those in state prisons.
IMPORTING AND EXPORTING INMATES
Profits are so good that now there is a new business: importing inmates with long sentences, meaning the worst criminals. When a federal judge ruled that overcrowding in Texas prisons was cruel and unusual punishment, the CCA signed contracts with sheriffs in poor counties to build and run new jails and share the profits. According to a December 1998 Atlantic Monthly magazine article, this program was backed by investors from Merrill-Lynch, Shearson-Lehman, American Express and Allstate, and the operation was scattered all over rural Texas. That state's governor, Ann Richards, followed the example of Mario Cuomo in New York and built so many state prisons that the market became flooded, cutting into private prison profits.
After a law signed by Clinton in 1996 - ending court supervision and decisions - caused overcrowding and violent, unsafe conditions in federal prisons, private prison corporations in Texas began to contact other states whose prisons were overcrowded, offering "rent-a-cell" services in the CCA prisons located in small towns in Texas. The commission for a rent-a-cell salesman is $2.50 to $5.50 per day per bed. The county gets $1.50 for each prisoner.
STATISTICS
Ninety-seven percent of 125,000 federal inmates have been convicted of non-violent crimes. It is believed that more than half of the 623,000 inmates in municipal or county jails are innocent of the crimes they are accused of. Of these, the majority are awaiting trial. Two-thirds of the one million state prisoners have committed non-violent offenses. Sixteen percent of the country's 2 million prisoners suffer from mental illness.
Global Research Articles by Vicky Pelaez
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise. Posts: 3827 | From: beautiful California | Registered: Sep 2008
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quote:Originally posted by raybond: Prisoners should not do city,county,state or federal work because it takes jobs away from honest American citizens.
As for is it good for prisoners the answer is yes, it is great for them as would entertainment be also, so would carpeted cells.They are employed they do take care of the prison. And nobody should abuse the prisoners for any reason.
If anybody is interested, prison labor is a ten billion dollar a year industry from the last report I read over 7 years ago,must be more now. How would you like to compete in the same areas of business with prison labor pay scales.
I thought we were already competing with prison labor pay scales with China.
I dont see much competition for highway trash removal, or dead carcass removal.
I always thought prison farming would be a good idea. Give them something to do to help grown their own food, maybe even farm their own cattle.
Posts: 6949 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I don't know what your business is but it sure ain't prisons
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise. Posts: 3827 | From: beautiful California | Registered: Sep 2008
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quote:Originally posted by raybond: I don't know what your business is but it sure ain't prisons
i do beleive the prisoners out on day passes that i see here all the time are earning that right on best behaviour. last motnh one walked out on her work pass and now has bench warrant out on her.
i live only a couple miles from Parchman (the State Pen)but it's as good as 100 mile the way the land lies.
i don't think Parchamn has prisoners out on day passes, they have 18,000 acres and only 4500 prisoners... They call it the prison without walls, after living here for the past several years i understand why
I don't know how to 'splain why the MS Delta is the way it is, it just is what it is, there's a reason this place is the home of the Blues, but it's got no name: Throughout MSP's history, it was referred to as "the prison without walls" due to the dispersed camps within its property.[5] Hugh Ferguson, the director of public affairs of MSP, said that the prison is not like Alcatraz, because it is not centralized in one or several main buildings. Instead MSP consists of several prison camps spread out over a large area, called "units." Each unit serves a specific segment of the prison population, and each unit is surrounded by walls with barbed tape.[51] The perimeter of the overall Parchman property has no fencing. The prison property, located on flat farmland of the Mississippi Delta, has almost no trees. Ferguson said that a potential escapee would have no place to hide. Richard Rubin, author of Confederacy of Silence: A True Tale of the New Old South, said that MSP's environment is so inhospitable for escape that prisoners working in the fields are not chained to one another, and one overseer supervises each gang.[52] A potential escapee could wander for days without leaving the MSP property.[53] As of 1971 guards patrol MSP on horseback instead of on foot.[42] The rear entrance is protected by a steel barricade and a guard tower.[29] In 1985 Robert Cross of the Chicago Tribune said "The physical surroundings--cotton and bean fields, the 21 scattered camps, the barbed wire enclosures--suggest that nothing much has changed since the days, early in this century, when outsiders could visit Parchman State Penal Farm only on the fifth Sunday of those rare months containing more than four."
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