Crime pays for US prison companies

[Up2Late]

Source: AFP

Crime pays for US prison companies

09/03/2008 03h16

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Financiers, real-estate agents and car salesmen might be suffering from America's economic malaise, but bulging jails have triggered a profit boom for corrections companies. The United States leads the world in the number of people it incarcerates and government figures show the country's prison population grew by three percent to a record 2.3 million inmates in 2006.

Harsher sentencing policies have put more criminals behind bars and prison management firms such as the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and The GEO Group are racing to build new jails or expand existing facilities to house more convicted felons.

CCA, the largest US private prison operator, is spending 205 million dollars to build a new prison in Eloy, Arizona, to house 3,060 prisoners. It is also constructing a 105-million-dollar jail near Natchez, Mississippi, to hold 1,668 inmates.

"As states struggle with overcrowded facilities, growing populations and no meaningful supply of beds coming online, they are finding that private correction companies, such as CCA, can deliver beds more quickly and less expensively than they can develop themselves," CCA's chief executive John Ferguson said in an email to AFP. CCA's profits swelled to 35 million dollars in the fourth quarter of last year, rising from 32 million in the same period of 2006, as revenues jumped to 382 million dollars.

Read more: http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/newsmlmmd.8edefc07a944fb4923c4d48f0a5c44f9.341.html

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What a shameful thing to Number One in the World in. :grr:

[pfitz59]

1. let the non-violent offenders go...

at least half the prisoners are drug offenders. the greatest harm they do id to themselves.

[Up2Late]

2. Yup, my best friend got busted for buying steroids on-line from over-seas suppliers...

...and that arrest literally ruined his life.

He lost his life-long dream job because of it and was even fired from his job at Wal-Mart when they found out about it. After 8 years of more dead-end jobs, he was dead from an addition to the pain pill Vicodin, a Legal prescription Drug that should be illegal because it's so easy to get addicted to and almost always is deadly when you do get addicted to it. :mad:

Read more here: <http://www2.hawaii.edu/~destinyj/pain_killers/vicoden/vicoden.htm>

[Lasher]

7. Sad story.

And all too familiar. Seems every crime is punished by a life sentence.

[PDJane]

3. Won't happen until the prison lobby

is neutered. There is something really, really vicious and stupid about putting prisons in hands that will then lobby for stronger minimum sentencing so that they can throw more people in jail for longer so that they can make more money to lobby for........


Infuriatingly, stultifyingly stupid system.

[tecelote]

4. Totally Agree!

Profits should not be made from putting people in jail. It is simply wrong.

[spag68]

5. profits

should not be made from health care either, but try to stop that. We have been systematically screwed since nixon and his big money friends got a taste of what they could do. This is not new, it has to be stopped and soon.

[soothsayer]

19. privatization of the prisons = they need bodies in beds to make $$$

[Doctor Cynic]

6. We definitely could use a Reagan to stand up to those lobbies.

If I had my way, all those private prison companies would have their contracts shredded live on CNN and anyone imprisoned for ridiculous reasons would be immediately freed and compensated.

Heck, we should steal the rhetoric the right uses against welfare programs.

"The government should not be a make-work program for prison lobbies/arms contractors/highway builders/oil companies!"

"Your tax dollars are being used so that Halliburton executives can swim in multi billion dollar profits! Vote for us if you don't like that!"

"The welfare bums at Lockheed Martin need to learn a thing or two about surviving without government handouts!"

[Lasher]

8. Odd choice of champions there.

Reagan wouldn't be my first choice for someone to fight privatization or any of those who prosper from it.

[RaleighNCDUer]

10. I believe that was said with tongue firmly placed in cheek.

But the idea is sound - we need to use the rhetoric used by Reagan on his so-called welfare queens to go after the people that are REALLY sucking us dry.

[Lasher]

11. Oh duh. I get it now.

[zanne]

13. I love that smiley! nt

[Lasher]

14. Glad you liked it.

Thanks for the complement.



Here, have fun: http://www.cosgan.de/smilie.php?wahl=6&ziel=konfus

[penguin7]

9. Follow the money and the lawyers make billions upon tens of billions

upon gobs and gobs of money on this travesty.

Lawyers try to claim that so much is done pro bono, they make so little from these cases, blah blah blah. Somone in trouble with the law pays whatever it takes so the lawyers cry of poverty is not quite honest.

We have the resources of the state against the resources of the individual in a criminal case. This is lucrative for lawyers but not good for finding truth. And why do cases get plea bargained?

As a class, the lawyers are the most powerful group that can bring change here. Let us put some heat on the lawyers for change.

[flashl]

12. Crimes pays using Blackcodes and Jim Crow laws

A few months ago, when Pew Trust reported a reduction in U.S. population growth, this information started a panic in the correction stocks. Days later, investors were assured their investments were safe with new census reports showing a continued increase in U.S. population. This investor panic reveals that growth in corrections is based purely on population size NOT crime.

The prison industry complex (PIC) is another source of job outsourcing. Today, prisons in many instances are no more than factories behind fences.

The same population this society claims to have no job skills are trained and marketed to Wall Street companies as the 'perfect' workforce requiring no overtime or days off.

A few years ago, the PIC bragged and claimed it was the second largest employer with GM being number one. The recent job market reports and layoffs from U.S. automakers suggest the PIC is now likely the U.S. largest employer.

Shortly after slaves were allegedly emancipated, states instituted slavery through the use of blackcodes and Jim Crow laws. Using these laws minorities were picked up off the streets for minor infractions and jailed. States used this population to fuel their economic growth by outsourcing prisoners to companies like Drummond Coal.

Paying a prisoner $.17 per hour as salary for 'training' for work on the outside that demands far more per hour IS slavery. At that rate, a 'modern day slave' has to work months to buy a tube of toothpaste from the PIC's commissary.

Today, several states like California and Florida spend more from their budgets for corrections than education. In many states, their ONLY 'industry' is prisons and 'modern day slaves'.

Recently, CCA threaten to remove its 'modern day slave' population from it's prisons in Colorado if the state didn't increase its payments. In return for a states economic benefit from the PICs, the PICs are drying up state resources using muni bonds to build prisons. Tax dollars are used to finance job lost to America's 'modern day slaves'.

The increase in life sentences for a young offender feeds the PICs economic growth and allows it to compete with businesses. Again, ALL jobs lost are NOT going overseas, they are also going to the prison industrial complex with a workforce available for thirty or more years.

After individuals have being subjected to years of abuse and disease, the PICs are now lobbying to dump thousands of disabled and sick 'modern day slaves' into states medicaid and medicare programs.

Yes, again, taxpayers are financing yet another miracle growth industry. This time for America's NUMBER ONE employer, the PICs.

[Up2Late]

15. Yup, I second all that...

...and it deserves a Kick:kick:

[sarcasmo]

16. 1in 100 adults in prison. This is just sick. Whoever tells you we are the greatest country in the

World is your enemy.

[PM Martin]

17. Non violent offenders should not be in jail

This is absurd.:argh:

[Ordr]

18. "Non violent offenders should not be in jail"

What about corrupt CEOs and scammers?