How for-profit prisons have become the biggest lobby no one is talking about

[OverEasy]

Sen. Marco Rubio is one of the biggest beneficiaries.


Several industries have become notorious for the millions they spend on influencing legislation and getting friendly candidates into office: Big Oil, Big Pharma and the gun lobby among them. But one has managed to quickly build influence with comparatively little scrutiny: Private prisons. The two largest for-profit prison companies in the United States – GEO and Corrections Corporation of America – and their associates have funneled more than $10 million to candidates since 1989 and have spent nearly $25 million on lobbying efforts. Meanwhile, these private companies have seen their revenue and market share soar. They now rake in a combined $3.3 billion in annual revenue and the private federal prison population more than doubled between 2000 and 2010, according to a report by the Justice Policy Institute. Private companies house nearly half of the nation’s immigrant detainees, compared to about 25 percent a decade ago, a Huffington Post report found. In total, there are now about 130 private prisons in the country with about 157,000 beds.


Ever question a link between racial profiling in the south and prison privatization?

Source:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...=.cf1a549768f9

[Guest123018-4]

There shold not be any for profit prisons at all in the US.
If we as a people decide to warehouse criminals then we the people should do it and bear the cost.
If for profit prisons can do it more efficiently then the people should learn how to do it that way.

We know that many of our elected officials and a lot of the ap;pointed ones cannot be trusted to not participate in the profit and take money for feeding the system.

These prisons can however be used to house those that have entered this country illegally and that is fine with me.

[OverEasy]

Originally Posted by The2Dogs

There shold not be any for profit prisons at all in the US.
If we as a people decide to warehouse criminals then we the people should do it and bear the cost.
If for profit prisons can do it more efficiently then the people should learn how to do it that way.

We know that many of our elected officials and a lot of the ap;pointed ones cannot be trusted to not participate in the profit and take money for feeding the system.

These prisons can however be used to house those that have entered this country illegally and that is fine with me.

SB 1070, Arizona’s notorious anti-immigrant law, one now being copied by other states, was pushed by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, which CCA long served on, and once chaired, and by the Public Safety and Elections Task Force through which the “model legislation” moved. While CCA has denied reports that it authored the law, claiming that it only “observed” the task force’s endorsement of the legislation, there’s no question that CCA and others benefit from policies that encourage more detention of immigrants. According to the Justice Policy Institute, contracts from federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement made up 12 percent of CCA’s revenues in 2010 and 20 percent of rival GEO’s.

In September, the New York Times reported on the emergence of an international “detention-industrial complex” profiting from crackdowns on immigration, noting that private companies control half the detention beds in the United States.

Earlier this year, CCA wrote to officials in 48 states offering to buy and run prisons if states would guarantee a 90 percent occupancy rate. A coalition of religious groups urged state officials to turn down the offer, which the groups said would create an incentive for mass incarceration and “be costly to the moral strength of your state” as well as costly financially. “Truth in Sentencing” laws championed by ALEC backers such as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker also have the effect of encouraging longer prison stays, and higher profits, by limiting parole and incentives for good behavior.

It’s not only big companies that profit at the expense of the public interest. In Louisiana, according to a May 2012 investigative series by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, sheriffs have become entrepreneurs, overseeing local for-profit local prisons that give them a powerful financial incentive to keep their no-frills prisons full. The paper reports that Louisiana locks up more people per-capita than any other state, and the profit motive is one reason. “Prison operators, who depend on the world’s highest incarceration rate to survive, are a hidden driver behind the harsh sentencing laws that put so many people away for long periods.”

Some localities that have tried to cash in have found themselves in trouble. When private prisons locate in small towns, the towns can become so financially dependent on the prisons that state and local officials defend even nightmarish operations, like the violence-plagued juvenile detention center in Walnut Grove, Tenn., that was the subject of an NPR exposé last May. Because of changes by state lawmakers, prison officials were permitted to raise the age limit and expand beds and profits, so that the “juvenile” facility has 13-year-old offenders locked up with 22-year-olds. And, prison corporations tout their role as the county’s largest employers as a way to gain even more leverage and power over policy decisions.


Source:

http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/pre...-undermining-d

[i'va biggen]

Combine the two threads.........