Democrats stance on private prisons..

Also included are the Repub positions.. Please add any updates....

I know HIllary has given speeches on drugs and treatments and may have said something more recent.



March 6th 2015


http://www.attn.com/stories/1092/2016-candidates-private-prisons

The Troubling Stances on Private Prisons Among Many 2016 Candidates

In recent years, public and political opinion on criminal justice and prison reform has undergone something of a sea change. Emerging from the 1980s and 1990s––decades defined by harsh sentencing laws, dragnet policing, and the apex of the famously ineffective war on drugs––the public and even once-tough-on-crime advocates are taking a second look at the efficacy such hard-line policies supposedly wrought.

Arguably, one of the vilest outgrowths of the mad rush to lock up offenders of all stripes has been the private, for-profit prison sector, an industry whose many violations are frankly hard to keep up with. In the latest scandal, prisoners at one private Texas facility that holds mostly undocumented immigrants rioted recently over poor medical care, as well as things like overflowing sewage and overcrowding. In recent years, the same facility has been plagued with allegations of sexual and physical abuse, maggots in inmates’ food, and inmates’ wash loads mixed with mops and cleaning equipment.

As the likely 2016 presidential candidates continue to develop their stances on important issues, their records will be scrutinized. But we should pay special attention to their stances on the policies and ideas of past eras, and especially their vision of the path forward. We’ve told you about where the candidate-hopefuls stand on vaccines and marijuana, so here’s a rundown on their relationships with private prisons to keep in mind for 2016’s election..................
-
Hillary Clinton (D)

Though the private prison industry swelled around the time she was FLOTUS, Clinton has remained notably quiet on the subject in the run-up to formally announcing her candidacy. It was only last year, in what many called her “strongest comments yet” regarding criminal justice, that she addressed the “hard truths” of racial discrimination and the need for criminal justice reform. “[D]espite all the progress we’ve made together, African-Americans, and most particularly, African-American men, are still more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes, and sentenced to longer prison terms,” she said at the Massachusetts conference for Women. Americans don’t break more laws than other nations, she said. “It is because we have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance. And I personally hope that these tragedies give us the opportunity to come together as a nation to find our balance again.”

Her speech was a marked departure from a 1994 Annual Women in Policing address, when she declared that “we need more police, we need more and tougher prison sentences for repeat offenders…we need more prisons to keep violent offenders for as long as it takes to keep them off the streets.”

Martin O’Malley (D)

The former Maryland governor built himself up as a tough-on-crime Baltimore mayor in the early aughts, but slowly issued more and more pardons as governor: 133 in his second term, up from 13 in his first. So far, he has not issued any stance on prison privatization. Governor O'Malley did preside over numerous prison scandals, however; most notably, a prison in Baltimore was overrun by gang members under his leadership.

Bernie Sanders (I)

A few days ago, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was in the news after he called on the White House to take executive action against certain tax breaks. Among them is a real estate loophole that allows business like private prisons to avoid corporate income taxes by claiming that they make money from rents. He has also voted in favor of investing in alternative sentencing as opposed to building more prisons.