Sanders to push a plan to ban private companies from running prisons

[eridani]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/09/17/sanders-to-push-a-plan-to-ban-private-companies-from-running-prisons/

Under the proposal by the Democratic presidential hopeful, the federal government would have three years to end its practice of using private companies to keep people behind bars. The ban would also apply to state and local governments, which have increasingly turned to private contractors in a bid to save money.

“It runs counter to the best interests of our country,” Sanders said in an interview Wednesday. “You should not be making a profit off of putting people in prison.”

Sanders’s “Justice Is Not For Sale Act,” which he plans to introduce as legislation in Congress, also includes several provisions intended to dramatically reduce the number of immigrants who are held in detention facilities while awaiting court hearings on their legal status.

[How Bernie Sanders is plotting his path to the Democratic nomination]

The release of Sanders’s plan comes as he seeks to broaden his appeal among African-American and Latino voters, two key constituencies in the Democratic nominating process for whom the issue of privately run prisons and detention facilities has emerged as a hot-button issue.

Sanders is scheduled to appear at a news conference Thursday on Capitol Hill to unveil the bill, which is being sponsored in the House by Rep. Raul Manuel Grijalva (D-Ariz.).

[Art_from_Ark]

1. Just one more reason to like the guy

The concept of profiting from the incarceration of others, and even mandating a mininum incarceration rate, is truly disgusting.

[JackInGreen]

2. We should be getting profit out of the commons period

and 'The Commons' should cover a LOT.

[Babel_17]

3. We can't forget that judge who got kickbacks for sentencing kids

He epitomized the problem.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2011/08/12/pennsylvania-judge-gets-life-sentence-for-prison-kickback-scheme/

His sentence brings to closure a dark time in the history of the city of Wilkes-Barre, PA, which is in Luzerne County. He was found guilty in February of racketeering for taking a $1 million kickback from the builder of for-profit prisons for juveniles. Ciavarella who left the bench over two years ago after he and another judge, Michael Conahan, were accused of sentencing youngsters to prisons they had a hand in building. Prosecutors alleged that Conahan, who pleaded guilty last year and is awaiting sentencing, and Ciavarella received kick-backs from the private company that built and maintained the new youth detention facility that replaced the older county-run center.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

The "kids for cash" scandal unfolded in 2008 over judicial kickbacks at the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Two judges, President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan, were accused (and were eventually convicted) of accepting money from Robert Mericle, builder of two private, for-profit youth centers for the detention of juveniles, in return for contracting with the facilities and imposing harsh adjudications on juveniles brought before their courts to increase the number of residents in the centers.[1][2]

For example, Ciavarella adjudicated children to extended stays in youth centers for offenses as minimal as mocking a principal on Myspace, trespassing in a vacant building, or shoplifting DVDs from Wal-mart.

[SoapBox]

4. Sick!

OMG...I never heard about this.

I think you should post/repost this in GD as a little "reminder".

[Babel_17]

5. Thanks for the suggestion, I followed it

I just now started a thread in GD.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027182565