For Profit Incarceration, Every American Should Be Appalled

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/35513-focus-for-profit-incarceration-every-american-should-be-appalled

The country’s two largest private prison corporations, GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) released their annual financial reports last week, showing that they each made thousands of dollars in profits per prisoner incarcerated. GEO made a profit of $2,135 per prisoner, while CCA squeezed out $3,356. This is most certainly not cause for celebration.

Indeed, every American should be appalled that there are companies that profit on human misery and that can guarantee a profit only by denying human beings basic medical care and necessities. Moreover, the national conversation should not be one of how to incarcerate more and more people for less and less money, but how to rehabilitate them at a cost far less than incarceration.

The research and policy organization In the Public Interest estimates that the cost of rehabilitation is not only significantly lower than the cost of incarceration, ($35,350 per prisoner in the federal system) it is, in many cases, even lower than the per-person profits of the private prison companies. For example, the annual cost per prisoner of community-based services for arrested teenagers is only $1,000; resources and support for released prisoners re-entering society is $1,200; math, reading, and writing classes in prison are $1,600; vocational training in prison is $2,000; and substance abuse counseling for released prisoners is $2,700. Even residential drug treatment as an alternative to prison is $17,000 per person, less than half the cost of incarceration.

But remember, the goals of GEO and CCA are not to rehabilitate anyone. Those companies only make money if there are more prisoners, if they serve longer sentences, if they reoffend after release, or if the companies can keep costs so low by reducing money spent on food or medical care that they can then pass the savings and profits on to the stockholders.

[Peace Patriot]

1. See also this illuminating post by new DUer hillarysong

The myth of Bill Clinton being "great" for black employment
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1280133340

It's about the millions of black prisoners NOT being included in unemployment stats.

And thanks for your info about these absolutely disgusting prison profiteers!

[metroins]

2. A family member of mine

Is incarcerated. He owns a successful small business, but no college degree. He was sentenced on a conspiracy charge to a little over a year, no actual wrong doing on his part, but he was an investor. He's over age 50.

In prison, they tried to push him into a college program, then into a job training program. He doesn't need or want a degree and already has a job. The crazy thing is almost all of the classes are TAUGHT BY INMATES.

He said a lot of the other inmates still can't read or write, but they're in these GED programs or college courses and most will not pass. But every time they fail, they get back into the program and the prison gets money.

I understand he's not a target person for the programs, but they told him they'd take away his good behavior time if he didn't enroll. So he signed up for Computer and Spanish, but the inmate instructor knows almost nothing about computers.

He says the programs are all about funding where he's at. I'm sure somebody has been helped before by them but the cost versus benefit seems very low.

Rehabilitation would be a million times more efficient. There's something called RDAP which is drug and alcohol therapy. He says that helps people.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Thank you for this info! It's good to know, first-hand, what works and what doesn't.

It seems like an incredible waste of government resources to keep your family member in prison. Why on earth isn't he on parole running his business, making a living, contributing to society?

Did he have good legal representation? So many prisoners have terrible defense lawyers! It's all about money.

Frankly, I'm for emptying the prisons of all non-violent offenders, giving them temporary incomes and long term counseling help (and substance abuse help) if needed. We are wasting billions and billions of dollars locking people up, often over nothing, compared to what, say, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld did--slaughtering a hundred thousand innocent people, all based on lies. But, hey, get caught with some weed in your pocket, or trying to make a living in this busted economy selling it, and especially get caught being black, and you're in for ten frigging years, or get caught on the fringes of a fraud scheme, and you, too, become just a body to the privateers running the prisons. The longer they can keep you in, the more cash in their pockets.

This is incredibly inhumane and destructive of society! It's not just costly in dollar terms, it ruins lives, famlies, children and entire communities!

We also need to restore voting rights to most prisoners (it is unconscionable that, in some states, prisoners lose their voting rights for life!). And if prison is the only remedy, we need to house most prisoners IN their communities. There is a terrible scam going on, of taking black prisoners in particular way out of their community to sparsely populated, white, rural areas, to pad the Census statistics for those areas, so they get more federal dollars and better representation than they merit. The prisoners can't vote, but their bodies get counted there and NOT in their home community, which is deprived of that prisoner as a countable person.

And a new DUer, hillarysong, just today posted an important article on unemployment statistics. Those stats EXCLUDE prisoners. The result is that African-American unemployment figures are way lower than they should be. What truly rotten irony--the ripple effects of mass incarceration!

[eridani]

8. ACLU has a nice overview of advocating for prisoner voting rights.

https://www.aclu.org/files/pdfs/votingrights/votingwhileincarc_20051123.pdf

[eridani]

9. State by state summary

http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000286

In Vermont and Maine, there are actually polling places in jails.

[Peace Patriot]

10. Really!? Wow! I would expect it of VT, now that we all know more about VT.

(VT gave NO delegates to Clinton--not one! Go VT!)

But Maine, too, huh? That is great--a model for everywhere else, if only...

[tk2kewl]

4. k&r

[nationalize the fed]

5. In the US Circa 2016

EVERYTHING IS FOR SALE

Citizens
Post offices
Jobs
Ports
Harbors
Airports
Companies
Souls
Congresspeople
Roads
Infrastructure
Health Care
Manufacturing
Air Traffic Control

and on and on

EVERYTHING. How did it get like this? Greed. Unchecked greed. Good luck fixing this nightmare.

"Some things should NEVER be for sale" - Ralph Nader

[Nye Bevan]

6. I'm about as pro-free market as they come on DU,

but certain things do not belong in free markets. Healthcare and prisons, to name two examples.

[Octafish]

7. Like in Iraq?

Where Cost-Plus accounting plus war without end make profits without cease.

Instead of a War on Terror, it's a War on Drugs or whatever, as long as it's not Banksters or Politicians who Lie.