Schwarzenegger Deals With Prison Crisis

[Khephra]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- While prison guards allegedly watched the Super Bowl and ignored his screams for hours, an inmate on dialysis died as most of his blood drained from his body.

The death last month was just the latest horror story to come out of the California prison system and confront Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger with one of the biggest crises of his new administration.

Among other things, two teenagers hanged themselves last month at a juvenile prison. And in a recent series of scathing reports and hearings, legislators, outside experts and whistleblowers have charged that the nation's biggest prison system is plagued by out-of-control spending, inhumane discliplinary practices, and outright brutality on the part of guards.

"Most people in California aren't sent to prisons on death sentences," said state Sen. Gloria Romero, a Democrat from Los Angeles who is co-chairing legislative hearings now under way on the 160,000-inmate prison system. "Yes, we want to be tough on crime. We don't want to be torture chambers."

more............

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-california-prisons,0,5896539.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines

[gWbush is Mabus]

1. I VANT To tell YOU AVOUT the economy

it is so bad, that the people of Kaleeforneya are losing their blood as well as their clothes

[fob]

2. You mean the same Gov Ahnold that fired the oversight person

of the prisons the day before his report was to come out only to rehire him a few weeks later? That Gov is going to do something?

EFFFF HIMMM!

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

3. Nice glowing article from NEWSDAY, but I'll bet money

the GROPENATOR opens the talk back up to PRIVATIZED prisons whose records are NO BETTER.

[MisterP]

4. he's already met with Wackenhut

[Zhade]

6. WACKENHUT? Good Christ!

Ralph Garcia, a rancher driven to financial ruin by drought in New Mexico, signed on at Wackenhut's Santa Rosa prison. For $7.95 an hour he guarded medium-security inmates including multiple murderers, members of a homicidal neo-Nazi cult and the Mexican Mafia gang. Although he had yet to complete his short training course, Garcia was left alone in a cell block with 60 unlocked prisoners. They ran amok, stabbing an inmate and then Garcia, several times.

Why was Garcia left alone among the convicts? It wasn't a mistake, but simply Wackenhut's cut-rate Jails 'R' Us policy: one guard in a 'pod' and two prisoners in each cell. This reverses the ratio in government-run prisons: two guards per block, one prisoner per cell. Of course, the state's own prisons are not as 'efficient' (for which read 'cheap') as the private firm's. But then, the state hasn't lost a guard in 17 years. Wackenhut hasn't yet operated 17 months.

Sources have told The Observer that two weeks prior to Garcia's stabbing, a senior employee warned Wackenhut corporate honchos that the one-guard system is a death-sentence lottery. The executive's response: 'We'd rather lose one officer than two.'

How does Wackenhut get away with it? It cannot hurt the company that it put Manny Aragon, the state legislature's Democratic leader, on its payroll as a lobbyist. 'Isn't that illegal?' I asked state Senator Cisco McSorley. The Democratic Senator, a lawyer and vice-chairman of the legislature's Judiciary Committee, said: 'Of course it is.' Welcome to New Mexico.

Free Market In Human Misery - The London Observer, Sunday, September 26, 1999

[Taeger]

5. MUCH WORSE

Actually, the private prisons are MUCH WORSE!!!!!

They suck everything they can into profit. And no, private prisons ARE NOT just allowed to go out of business if they are inefficient. They have as much political vestment as public prisons do. Their sponsors will work VERY hard to keep a private prison going despite collosal failure.