Searcher44
Gold Member
Capitalism has rarely avoided finding the amoral route to maximizing profits. Giving it total control over a population that is already heavily at risk of recidivism and violence looks like a recipe for disaster to me. Maximum security Is already a hell hole in fact and privatizing the institution only guarantees less public over site not more as events lately seem to cry out for. And the following innovations will grease that revolving door you would think society has an overwhelming need to curtail, not facilitate. The only beneficiaries of increasing the recidivism rate are the Private Prison Corporations.
Private Prison Corporations, as good predatory capitalists are preying on the weakest among of of course.
We are living in boom times for the private prison industry. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation's largest owner of private prisons, has seen its revenue climb by more than 500 percent in the last two decades. And CCA wants to get much, much bigger: Last year, the company made an offer to 48 governors to buy and operate their state-funded prisons. But what made CCA's pitch to those governors so audacious and shocking was that it included a so-called occupancy requirement, a clause demanding the state keep those newly privatized prisons at least 90 percent full at all times, regardless of whether crime was rising or falling.
Occupancy requirements, as it turns out, are common practice within the private prison industry. A new report by In the Public Interest, an anti-privatization group, reviewed 62 contracts for private prisons operating around the country at the local and state level. In the Public Interest found that 41 of those contracts included occupancy requirements mandating that local or state government keep those facilities between 80 and 100 percent full. In other words, whether crime is rising or falling, the state must keep those beds full. (The report was funded by grants from the Open Society Institute and Public Welfare, according to a spokesman.)
All the big private prison companies—CCA, GEO Group, and the Management and Training Corporation—try to include occupancy requirements in their contracts, according to the report. States with the highest occupancy requirements include Arizona (three prison contracts with 100 percent occupancy guarantees), Oklahoma (three contracts with 98 percent occupancy guarantees), and Virginia (one contract with a 95 percent occupancy guarantee). At the same time, private prison companies have supported and helped write "three-strike" and "truth-in-sentencing" laws that drive up prison populations. Their livelihoods depend on towns, cities, and states sending more people to prison and keeping them there.
And once they have their prey in prison?
“Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out.”
“Beat a dog once and you only have to show him the whip.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
You've got to carry that weight a long time.
Prison fees can also create another obstacle for inmates after they’re released: intractable debt. In Florida, the state relied on private collection agencies that added surcharges as high as 40%; in California, failure to pay a fee resulted in an extra $300 charge. And in some cases these fees can land convicts back in prison, costing taxpayers even more.
Maggots Keep Appearing in Food Prepared by Private Prison Food Vendor
The Ohio Columbus Dispatch reports that on June 30th food workers in Ohio's Marysville prison found a serving tray infested with larvae after a maggot was spotted on a turkey roll. The company wrote off the incident as "one issue that was resolved last week,” but the Dispatch obtained reports of two other instances in Ohio prisons serviced by Aramark. On June 24th, live maggots were reported spilling from a warming tray in a prison in Leavittsburg and in food serving lines in January. Michigan inmates in two seperate facilities were treated to maggots in the span of one week this summer, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Aramark has been subjected to multiple audits, even in Southern states where public officials are generally enthusiastic about privatized prison services. A 2010 audit by the state of Kentucky found that the company watered down the food and cut ingredients from recipes, and that food shortages were a common occurance.
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According to the FCC, some prison inmates have had to pay as much as $17 for a 15 minute phone call. The new rate caps, which were passed by the agency last fall under the leadership of acting FCC Chair Mignon Clyburn, impose a limit of 25 cents per minute for debit calling and 21 cents per minute for collect calling.
Prison phone companies today were granted a judicial stay that halts implementation of new, lower rate caps on inmate calls. The court did not halt new limits on certain ancillary fees related to inmate calls, though, so the overall price of prison calling should go down.
Global Tel*Link (GTL) and Securus Technologies had asked the US Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia to stay new price regulations until a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission is decided, arguing that they have a high likelihood of prevailing in the case. The companies argue that the FCC overstepped its authority and that the new limits fall short of what prison phone companies are contractually obligated to pay in "site commissions" to correctional facilities. Despite protest from the FCC, the court today partially granted the stay request.
Legislation passed in both houses this week would close the loopholes that let some companies levy exorbitant tolls, setting the price for domestic calls at 11 cents per minute and capping the charge for international calls at 25 cents per minute. The measures would also ban commissions (or kickbacks) made by the phone companies to the county.
An identical bill lapsed on the governor’s desk in 2014.
The new legislation (S-1880) passed the Senate 35 to 2 and the Assembly 57 to 20 and is a carryover from last session’s bill (A-4576).
Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Hunterdon and Mercer) who sponsored the bill issued a statement about the need for these new regulations. She called for an end to “price gouging” and said the current cost of in-state calls at some facilities can be as high as 33 cents per minute, which can prevent inmates from connecting with their loved ones.
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Southern hospitality is famous, but the accommodations at Anderson County Jail will no longer be gratis. Inmates at this correctional
institution northwest of Knoxville, Tenn., will soon have to pay fed-up taxpayers $9.15 for each pair of pants issued during their stay, $6.26 for each blanket and $1.15 for each towel. They’ll even have to shell out 29¢ for toilet paper.
A county of about 75,000 people, Anderson, like many municipalities across the country, has seen the cost of housing inmates rise in the past few years. And like many states, cities and counties facing tight budget constraints, Anderson has turned to the inmates themselves to defray some of those costs.
“Our taxpayers pay $62 a day to house one inmate,” says Jay Yeager, the Anderson County law director who proposed the program. “Our inmate care, medical care, housing care, all those budgetary codes have escalated over the past several years, and it’s an unreasonable burden on our taxpayers. What we’re trying to do is shift the burden off the taxpayers’ back, to the inmates.”
=========================
Prison fees can also create another obstacle for inmates after they’re released: intractable debt. In Florida, the state relied on private collection agencies that added surcharges as high as 40%; in California, failure to pay a fee resulted in an extra $300 charge. And in some cases these fees can land convicts back in prison, costing taxpayers even more.
Private Prison Corporations, as good predatory capitalists are preying on the weakest among of of course.
We are living in boom times for the private prison industry. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation's largest owner of private prisons, has seen its revenue climb by more than 500 percent in the last two decades. And CCA wants to get much, much bigger: Last year, the company made an offer to 48 governors to buy and operate their state-funded prisons. But what made CCA's pitch to those governors so audacious and shocking was that it included a so-called occupancy requirement, a clause demanding the state keep those newly privatized prisons at least 90 percent full at all times, regardless of whether crime was rising or falling.
Occupancy requirements, as it turns out, are common practice within the private prison industry. A new report by In the Public Interest, an anti-privatization group, reviewed 62 contracts for private prisons operating around the country at the local and state level. In the Public Interest found that 41 of those contracts included occupancy requirements mandating that local or state government keep those facilities between 80 and 100 percent full. In other words, whether crime is rising or falling, the state must keep those beds full. (The report was funded by grants from the Open Society Institute and Public Welfare, according to a spokesman.)
All the big private prison companies—CCA, GEO Group, and the Management and Training Corporation—try to include occupancy requirements in their contracts, according to the report. States with the highest occupancy requirements include Arizona (three prison contracts with 100 percent occupancy guarantees), Oklahoma (three contracts with 98 percent occupancy guarantees), and Virginia (one contract with a 95 percent occupancy guarantee). At the same time, private prison companies have supported and helped write "three-strike" and "truth-in-sentencing" laws that drive up prison populations. Their livelihoods depend on towns, cities, and states sending more people to prison and keeping them there.
And once they have their prey in prison?
“Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out.”
“Beat a dog once and you only have to show him the whip.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
You've got to carry that weight a long time.
Prison fees can also create another obstacle for inmates after they’re released: intractable debt. In Florida, the state relied on private collection agencies that added surcharges as high as 40%; in California, failure to pay a fee resulted in an extra $300 charge. And in some cases these fees can land convicts back in prison, costing taxpayers even more.
Maggots Keep Appearing in Food Prepared by Private Prison Food Vendor
The Ohio Columbus Dispatch reports that on June 30th food workers in Ohio's Marysville prison found a serving tray infested with larvae after a maggot was spotted on a turkey roll. The company wrote off the incident as "one issue that was resolved last week,” but the Dispatch obtained reports of two other instances in Ohio prisons serviced by Aramark. On June 24th, live maggots were reported spilling from a warming tray in a prison in Leavittsburg and in food serving lines in January. Michigan inmates in two seperate facilities were treated to maggots in the span of one week this summer, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Aramark has been subjected to multiple audits, even in Southern states where public officials are generally enthusiastic about privatized prison services. A 2010 audit by the state of Kentucky found that the company watered down the food and cut ingredients from recipes, and that food shortages were a common occurance.
=======================================================
According to the FCC, some prison inmates have had to pay as much as $17 for a 15 minute phone call. The new rate caps, which were passed by the agency last fall under the leadership of acting FCC Chair Mignon Clyburn, impose a limit of 25 cents per minute for debit calling and 21 cents per minute for collect calling.
Prison phone companies today were granted a judicial stay that halts implementation of new, lower rate caps on inmate calls. The court did not halt new limits on certain ancillary fees related to inmate calls, though, so the overall price of prison calling should go down.
Global Tel*Link (GTL) and Securus Technologies had asked the US Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia to stay new price regulations until a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission is decided, arguing that they have a high likelihood of prevailing in the case. The companies argue that the FCC overstepped its authority and that the new limits fall short of what prison phone companies are contractually obligated to pay in "site commissions" to correctional facilities. Despite protest from the FCC, the court today partially granted the stay request.
Legislation passed in both houses this week would close the loopholes that let some companies levy exorbitant tolls, setting the price for domestic calls at 11 cents per minute and capping the charge for international calls at 25 cents per minute. The measures would also ban commissions (or kickbacks) made by the phone companies to the county.
An identical bill lapsed on the governor’s desk in 2014.
The new legislation (S-1880) passed the Senate 35 to 2 and the Assembly 57 to 20 and is a carryover from last session’s bill (A-4576).
Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Hunterdon and Mercer) who sponsored the bill issued a statement about the need for these new regulations. She called for an end to “price gouging” and said the current cost of in-state calls at some facilities can be as high as 33 cents per minute, which can prevent inmates from connecting with their loved ones.
============
Southern hospitality is famous, but the accommodations at Anderson County Jail will no longer be gratis. Inmates at this correctional
institution northwest of Knoxville, Tenn., will soon have to pay fed-up taxpayers $9.15 for each pair of pants issued during their stay, $6.26 for each blanket and $1.15 for each towel. They’ll even have to shell out 29¢ for toilet paper.
A county of about 75,000 people, Anderson, like many municipalities across the country, has seen the cost of housing inmates rise in the past few years. And like many states, cities and counties facing tight budget constraints, Anderson has turned to the inmates themselves to defray some of those costs.
“Our taxpayers pay $62 a day to house one inmate,” says Jay Yeager, the Anderson County law director who proposed the program. “Our inmate care, medical care, housing care, all those budgetary codes have escalated over the past several years, and it’s an unreasonable burden on our taxpayers. What we’re trying to do is shift the burden off the taxpayers’ back, to the inmates.”
=========================
Prison fees can also create another obstacle for inmates after they’re released: intractable debt. In Florida, the state relied on private collection agencies that added surcharges as high as 40%; in California, failure to pay a fee resulted in an extra $300 charge. And in some cases these fees can land convicts back in prison, costing taxpayers even more.
