K&R

I wish there was some way to make private prisons illegal.

then the prisoners are being short changed AND the taxpayers are paying too much to house their prisoners.

by any means necessary.

...and remember, some of the biggest lobbying efforts for increased prison time for various offenses (like drugs) have been by CCA and G4S/Wackenhut.

By any means necessary, indeed.

hoping we can end this insanity. For profit prisons? Who could have foreseen the problems?

But I'm applauding the move nonetheless. I hope the institutionally, Republican dominated government tries to run things in a non-partisan way instead of the conservative way they are prone to doing.

Beyond absurd.

it's in the ballpark of an Ivy League education. Multiply that by 1.6 million prisoners (2.25 million if you count federal/state/county--everybody). Many of them are in for non-violent crimes or other stupidities like 3-strike laws, mandatory minimums etc. An obscene waste.

ETA: What's worse, in this case, is that $14,500 per bed was apparently not enough, since CCA cheated on their labor costs, and another company didn't even want to bid for the contract.

and prisoner programs/services over and above meals and uniforms?


rocktivity

and that includes everything you mentioned (with the possible exception of programs/services)(which I bet are the first things to go by the wayside in a for-profit system).

Problem is a private company is looking to make $$$ and has a motive to a) charge as much as possible for their services while b) providing as little as possible. A state-run facility would look to run more on a break-even basis and might even have goals beyond lining their pockets. States don't have an incentive to build ever-bigger prisons and fill them up with ever more people. To me the most despicable thing about private prisons is their contractual demand for full occupancy, leading to the criminalization of more things, leading to bigger prisons, leading to new contracts etc etc etc.

Last edited Sat Jan 4, 2014, 10:49 AM - Edit history (2)

just like the rest of us.

Great news

This is a long, long article on the subject--it really is long--but it is worth reading.

A key part of the piece is here, but it's by no means the whole magilla:

A few hundred thousand dollars to keep a $29 million a year contract.

It's something that an opponent can use to challenge a politician. No one likes a jerk who trafficks in human misery.

HEALTH, EDUCATION, JUSTICE, TRANSPORTATION, UTILITIES AND COMMUNICATION
SHOULD NEVER BE PRIVATIZED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Expect this Attack On The Sacred Private Sector to be an issue in the primaries. People are already pissed about the exchange Otter got through. Now he is attacking Free Enterprise? Oh my, next thing ya know he'll attack apple pie and motherhood.

The reality is this was long overdue.

as opposed to doing the right thing for the right reasons. A bastion of the school of thought that private is better, Idaho is also one of the biggest exporters of prisoners to private prisons in other states.

if even Idaho is recognizing that they can't get away with it, that's good.

they can, "get out ahead," of public opinion and the coming big lawsuits. Excuse me for being so cynical as a local.

Prisons foremost. The obvious problem is that it's profitable to keep prisons full which does not serve society at all.

even with magnified/mandated insurance payers and healthier co-pays, will healthy people really be satisfactory for the rapacious appetites of greed?

instead of the current procedure based compensation is needed. Or even better to my mind, flat salary with outcome based bonuses.

The GOP mantra

There are some things that private companies cannot do as well as the government and should be left to the government.

of which the Corrections Corporation of America pockets as much as possible (if only out of a moral obligation to stockholders).

The business of incarceration should NOT be business.


rocktivity

Brewer has ties to private prisons, and that may be one of the reasons for the 1070 bill about illegals.
More people in prison, more money. Interesting find: her maiden name was Drinkwine, now Brewer.

Thank you for posting this...it is one of my most infuriating problems with the privitization of EVERYTHING that so many GOP/Wingnuts are so enamored with!!!

There are basic duties that MUST remain in the hands of the state for the good of the people and the most fundamental of these duties is the right to enforce punishments in service to the law. When private companies have economic incentives to subvert the rule of law (by either outright fraud, bribery and kick-backs), it mocks the very foundation of our society. It is bad enough that money on the top end is used to buy "justice" in the form of no-prosecution white-collar crime; but when the poor and the vulnerable are exploited for profits of private prisons, we are too far down a slippery slope for my comfort.

One man, one vote.
Equal justice before the law.
Federal enforcement of regulations.

These are principles for what I consider essential to "good government"; and they are eternally (in the last 30+ years increasingly) under fire and disparagment from the right.

Believing in these prinicples - and other related precepts like a fundamental RIGHT to health care in this nation and a fundamental NEED for society to invest as heavily in educating and feeding its population as it invests in spying on them or invading other nations - leaves me no common ground with modern republicans and too little comfort with the Third Way crowd.

There are simply some things that the government is the ONLY answer to, and law enforcement and criminal detention fall squarely in that camp for me and always will.

The level of incompetence by CCA in running the institution, so violent it was nicknamed the "Gladiator School" by inmates, finally made the very idea of a rebid on the contract by CCA an absurdity. Good riddance to another free market solution.

Last edited Sat Jan 4, 2014, 03:15 PM - Edit history (1)

... by government employees. This is a good development.

"Meanwhile the DEA
Teamed up with the CCA
They tryna lock n****s up
They tryna make new slaves
See that's that privately owned prisons
Get your piece today
They prolly all in the Hamptons
Braggin' 'bout what they made"

Imagine an industry that lobbies legislatures to pass more silly laws and make sentences stiffer. Never mind, the private prison industry already does that.