Private prisons demand 5 percent rate increase

[flashl]

Source: Puelbo Chieftain

DENVER - A private prison company is threatening to move all Colorado inmates out of one of its facilities if it doesn't get an increase in what the state pays to house them.

Corrections Corporation of America, which operates four of the state's five private prisons, including three in Southern Colorado, is demanding that the Colorado Legislature give it a 5 percent hike in the per diem it receives to house about 4,000 state inmates, Rep. Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, said Tuesday.

Buescher, chairman of the Legislature's Joint Budget Committee, said the Tennessee-based company is using its weight to try to force more money out of the state.

"We've got a negotiating disadvantage," he said. "The choice we've got to make is to give them a provider rate increase that is three times what we're giving to all other providers, or to build hundreds of millions of dollars in additional prisons. We don't have that hundreds of millions of dollars, and they know it. The decisions that have been made over the last 12 years (in using private prisons) have put us in a very difficult negotiating position."

Steve Owen, spokesman for the Nashville company, said CCA is simply trying to do what's best for its business. He said the company agreed to a lower per diem rate in 2001 when the state was suffering from a major budget shortfall.

Puelbo Chieftain

Read more: http://www.chieftain.com/metro/1202311113/4

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I guess when you are a big Wallstreet for profit-prison (Prison Industrial Complex - PIC) like CCA, the world is your oyster. If I am not mistaken, WallyWorld is the U.S. #1 employer and the PIC is the #2.

So, if Southern Colorado economy is depending on those jobs, they better pay up.

[ixion]

1. release the non-violent offenders

and presto, you've saved millions.

[DCKit]

4. Yeah, put all the smokers back on the street.

There's 50% gone right there. The rest can be transferred to the newly depopulated state-owned prisons. Buh-bye bloodsuckers!

[pattmarty]

5. Yeah, and then tell them to go fuck themselves.................

........ And if they don't like it, turn the motherfuckers into Motel 6's.

[peacetalksforall]

2. Privatization> give us more money or we will release prisoners. Called hostage taking.

[Tempest]

3. Technically it's blackmail and it's illegal

The DOJ needs to start an investigation into CCA's operations.

[terryg11]

6. right.

that will never happen unfortunately. Unfortunately, these prison corps. have ever so quietly become quite rich and powerful.

[peacetalksforall]

7. One of our big industries used to be tourism. That one is kind of failing - difficulty

of getting visas, eye scanning to come, tattoo reading, demands by us for foreign airlines to provide all details, putting it into a database, creating perpetual fear (with a side benefit of creating bigotry if no one leaves their state or county.

Now, prisons are blossoming. Some are empty, just waiting for 'something' that someones knows about, but not us.

Reduced military bases under Rumsfeld to convert that bases to prisons?

Usuall outsourcing. Possible sales to come. Maybe China?

Just projecting on transparent, yet mysterious agendas.

Who approved of private prisons, anyway?

[Tempest]

12. Especially in California

Every governor since Wilson has turned over more and more prisons to CCA and they dictate terms of contracts now.

[razors edge]

11. Spartacus is coming... n/t

[bemildred]

8. I guess this is what imminent domain is all about.

Time to buy the prison at $.50 on the dollar and kick these weasels out on their ass.

[mcscajun]

9. Just one reason why private prisons are a bad idea.

There shouldn't be PROFIT in imprisoning our fellow humans. Period.

[razors edge]

10. Delete.

Dupe.