I hope to goodness this comes up during the debates.

...the private prison industry simply should not exist. Anything that gives an incentive to imprison more people, and for longer times, is an affront to decency.

An ethical and informed person will support Bernie and/or O'Malley.

And complaints about how rude Bernie and O'Malley supporters are.

When your candidate supports a disgusting industry such as for-profit prisons, it is time for some blunt talk.

You'll be called a HATER!1!

The PUMAS will announce what a bold and leaderful statement this is, and wonder out loud why Bernie never discusses the issue.

except looking "hip", skinny jeans, mustache wax and cold-pressed coffee


or something...

look up Clinton supporter Anne Hathaway and her husband.

Give you a hint.

His middle name is 'skinny jeans'.

Thanks for the thread, cali.

Well said Bernie and thanks for the OP.

What a disgrace in this country, the wealthiest in the history of the world. The US has 2.2 million prisoners, the largest incarcerated population in the world including authoritarian, communist China.

One in four prisoners worldwide is imprisoned in the United States, according to Ta-Nehisi Coates, journalist for 'The Atlantic' and others. It's 'The New Jim Crow' as legal scholar Michelle Alexander has recently written about in her award winning book of the same name.

The militarized police departments throughout the US that are aggressively targeting and killing black and brown people also must undergo major changes. Increasingly there seems to be little difference between the police and the US military that is instituted to defend us from foreign attackers.

In arresting thousands, often illegally, for trivial offenses and with little accountability, the police are adding to their dept. funds and local and state treasury coffers. These arrests are also seriously damaging families and communities and providing inmates to keep the lucrative, highly profitable and privatized PIC maintained. It has to end.

Prisons should be a burden on society. Not a profit center.

He keeps speaking the truth every step of the way.

and the media will act like it was all her idea - like all her ideas.

behind this bill by calling your senators. The movement is meant to create change and this is one we can work on now.

I think it's time for another donation.

K&R

That's when we get to find out how much money and how many donations Bernie has.

Everybody donate if you can...

For-profit prisons undermines the very spirit of this nation. It must end.

I already rec'd this morning.

I wonder if he asked members of his campaign staff where he should post.

the people killed at Sandy Hook, a Zionist Jew, a moocher, a draft dodger, a pervert who has rape fantasies... do I need to go on or do you want to make another snide comment in a positive thread about Bernie and add to the list?

I am kind of glad he doesn't. The tone here can sometimes get a bit too bloody cynical.

I saw it at Daily Kos, but I want all DUers to see it too

I agree 100%

After our government's experiments with privatization, I understand whey the government took over these things in the first place. The government is not perfect, far from it, but it is better than privatization, which lends itself to corruption more easily

fitting especially in these times.

That creates a deterrent to locking people up.

We are paying to jail these people PLUS we are paying to make the CEO and the shareholders of the jail rich. The more people we jail - the more money they make so naturally they pay judges to jail more people.

The incarcerated will work just to get out and interact.They cant demand min. wage.

The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. “This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors.”

According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-united-states-big-business-or-a-new-form-of-slavery/8289?print=1

There have been bills introduced to require prisoners to work 50 hours a week in on site factories for little or no pay.

And let's not forget prisoners in call centers,....that person you talked to for your airline reservation could be behind bars.

Listen, I love and support Bernie. But focusing on the for-profit prisons is such a drop in the bucket.

Fewer than 150,000 people out of 2.2 million are currently in for-profit prisons. The majority of these people are in state facilities that the Feds don't even control.

So great, we succeed and ban for-profit prisons...then what? The people in these prisons get moved into overcrowded public prisons that aren't exactly country clubs and have their own share of horror stories.

The issue is our ridiculous incarceration rates and EVERYONE who profits off of it...do people realize that prisoners oftentimes work for private companies in prison and can make as little as .17 cents an hour?

Tons of corporations use prison labor to make their crap. Starbucks hires them to put together their Christmas box sets!

These two corporations may be evil, but they are a drop in the bucket of our awful system. Go after that, please. And let me see a path to 500,000...the total number of people who would be in jail if incarceration rates hadn't increased 700% after the civil rights act was passed and the war on drugs began.

It is OUR job to make sure the rain keeps falling.

I might agree with you,
but that insinuation is so far off base as to be laughable.

Besides 150,000 Americans locked up in For Profit Prisons (and growing) is enough to be very concerned about...
even a Presidential election.

Would you just abandon those 150,000 Americans?
They are important to me,
and if you were one of them it would be important to you too.

I guess some people don't care about the rapidly growing of the Private Prison Industry.
I heard it is very lucrative for the owners & stockholders. Private Prisons.
Those would be Hillary supporters.

Here is my problem...BLM has started it all. They are taking a lead and focusing on the injustice inherent in our system. This feels to me like white people want to ignore them and focus attention over here because what BLM is showing us is too threatening to deal with.

Right now there are several different bipartisan bills in congress to change sentencing laws. Lots of action at the state level as well. California became the first state to do away with grand juries for killer cops.

So why not continue to push these issues? Why get sideways and focus on two bad companies when success doesn't actually help real live people escape the draconian system of injustice we currently have?

Why? What is your evidence? Why is going after two companies more important than all of the other profiteers? Why just them?

What about Starbucks? They use prison labor to put together their Christmas gift packages.

Or Californian law enforcement who just killed a non-partisan bill to end civil asset forfeiture without a conviction?

Or prison guard unions who fight the same fight as these for profits to keep prisoners behind bars longer.

Other things that should NEVER be "privatized" in a democracy:

*Voting machines, tabulators, and the
reporting of votes

*Armed Military "Consultants" (Mercenaries)

*Our Public School System
(If it is broken...it is OUR job as American citizens to FIX it,
not steal the funding and give it to a corporation.)

*The Postal Service

The big problem in moving these agencies to The Private Sector is that they become opaque.
Oversight is removed from the American People, and put in the hands of a few greedy people in a boardroom.
AS an American citizen, I have a RIGHT and a DUTY to oversee our prisons, voting, Schools, the Postal Service.

The Military should be answerable TO THE PEOPLE if they are going to torture and kill in OUR names.
Blackwater could (and still does) kill indiscriminately without oversight or consequences.
THAT is Un-American, and un-democratic.

It is OUR job to undo these insults to democracy.

Private prisions are an outrage and a disgrace.

They are immoral. Unconscionable. Capitalism at its absolute worst, and folks, capitalism sucks!