Private prisons, public questions

New Mexico's use of jails run by companies is the highest in the country -- and rising -- but do they live up to their promises?

New Mexico leads the nation on another list: We're No. 1 in using private prisons to house inmates.

The latest U.S. Justice Department statistics, published in a study called Prisons in 2005, showed 43 percent of New Mexico prisoners were in private lockups.

That's well ahead of the 6 percent national rate for privately held state prison inmates.
And the percentage in New Mexico is bound to rise even higher in the near future.

Cells built during a spurt of prison construction under the previous state administration have become crowded, and the state Corrections Department next year plans to add 240 beds to the Guadalupe County Correctional Facility near Santa Rosa.

By the end of 2008, a planned 600-bed private prison is scheduled to open in Clayton. Most of the prisoners in that facility will be state inmates, corrections officials say.

The operator for both of these prisons is The GEO Group, formerly known as Wackenhut.

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/55131.html

If you want to keep the hotel full, there is nothing like a financial incentive to do so. Privativation of prisons simply makes another lobby group to get more convictions, stricter sentancing and more 'three strikes' type programs to send people to prison for victimless crimes.

When a government runs its own prisons, it has a vested interest in keeping the populations as small as possible.

Corporations running private for-profit prisons have a vested interest in keeping the populations as large as possible.

Private prisons are a prime example of fascism -- the merging of government and corporations.

In this past election cycle, the GEO Group contributed about $80,000 to candidates running for state office in New Mexico. The biggest beneficiary was Gov. Bill Richardson, who has collected $42,750 from the company since 2005.

I seem to recall reading somewhere a few years ago that the Chimperor's mother was helping bankroll some mega-prison company.
Does anyone know more about this?

Why Some of Corporate America Hates Amnesty...

In this midst of the great immigration debate, it makes sense to pause for a moment to consider some the interests arrayed against relaxed enforcement of our labyrinthine immigration policies. Who, after all, stands to benefit from stepped-up enforcement? How about the Prison-Industrial complex and it's web of for-profit prison companies like the Corrections Corporation of America?


In the grotesque calculus of the CCA world-view, more enforcement means more detention and more detention means more money. And, thanks to increasingly draconian policies enacted by the Bush administration which seek to detain more and more foreigners despite studies that show that almost 90 percent of those released to non-for-profit organizations (rather than being detained) actually show up for their hearings, CCA is likely to get it's windfall.

Right now, despite the fact that we continue to incarcerate people at an ever expanding rate, CCA has about 5,000 beds available. To fill them, they are aggressively bidding for a contracts to house 1,200 non-citizens in criminal cases, 2,800 incarcerated guests of the US marshall's service and several others.

According to Getahn Ward a writer for the Tennesssean, "CCA generates nearly 40% of its annual revenue from federal contracts -- 16% from the Bureau of Prisons, 15% from the U.S. Marshal Service and 8% from ICE. CCA's ties with ICE date back to the company's early days in 1983, when it was hired to build and run the Houston Processing Center for the agency that was then called INS.

Last year, the company housed 1,200 ICE inmates who had to be moved out of Florida because of Hurricane Wilma. "They're our largest single customer with needs south of the border," said Damon Hininger, vice president of federal customer relations at CCA. "With all the national emphasis on enforcement on the Southwest border and more resources available for patrol, that's going to have direct correlation with the need for detention."

Quick, shovel some more bodies into the system, the shareholders are getting anxious.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-feige/why-some-of-corporate-ame_b_21728.html

The United States holds more prisoners per capita and in total number than any country in the world.

We imprison more people than China.

America, Land of the Free?

Hah! Now, we practice torture and wage war without provocation as well.

There was a time when we could stand proud.