Fantastic Business Opportunities in the Prison Industrial Complex. Invest Your Sons and Daughters Now
America’s two largest private prison companies — GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America — “earned” over $2.9 billion dollars last year. There’s gold in them thar prison inmates. And if you hurry, YOU can get in on the ground floor NOW.
According to the Justice Policy Institute, the total prison population has increased by 16%. During the same period, the prison population of private federal prisons has increased by 120%.
And it gets worse. Private prisons are not just taking advantage of our harsh victimless-crime laws and unbalanced sentencing procedures. They’re actively working to create new laws and longer sentences.
The largest prison companies have bribed, er, I mean “contributed” nearly a million dollars to federal politicians, and over $6 million to state candidates. In Arizona, most of the state legislators who voted for the state’s immigration law — which will be a gold mine for private prisons — received campaign contributions from the private prison industry. Coincidence?
And in Florida, legislation has been introduced that would privatize ALL Florida prisons. Needless to say, there’s a lot of bribery involved here.
And in the “Small World” department, one of the founders of Corrections Corporation of America is the former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party.
Figures.
Labels: Arizona immigration law, Corrections Corporation of America, Florida private prisons, GEO Group, Justice Policy Institute, prison industrial complex, private prisons
posted by Tom Harper @ 11:40 AM
14 Comments:
It is a fact that prison populations increase everywhere privatized prisons exist. It is also a fact that it is much tougher to get released from a privatized prison. And the reason why is obvious.
I'm thinking we'll have to utterly collapse before the insanity ends. The Rushpubliscums are bound and determined to hand the whole country off to their owners.
Privatization was supposed to be the answer to a rising prison population, as the states didn't want to have their own lazy, overpaid, (read unionized) employees do it.
Still doesn't account for the fact that with the growth in prison population due to these sentencing laws = states will be spending money they don't have to incarnate them.
When will people understand, that just because we turn it over a contractor it isn't truly private as long as public funds are paying for it?
Erik
I hope it occurs to Floridians that there's no rational reason to assume private prisons will be cheaper for them than the ones they have now. To the contrary, there's good reason to assume that, once past the "speical introductory price" the state will be quoted to get the prisons turned over to them, the maximize-profits motive will kick in full force. So, in future years state taxpayers will see the bill go up and up and up, even if the number of imprisoned is about the same.
Not that Florida's crooked governor will have any problem with that. He's probably already figuring out how he's going to use his cut of the take.
I have said it before and I will say it again, making money off of punishing people has to be some kind of modern conservative wet dream.
Discipline & punish, baby.
JR: It could very well be that everything will have to collapse and then get rebuilt. There are too many red flags; private prisons are just one of them.
Erik: The public never does catch on to scams like this until it's too late.
SW: Unfortunately, these Florida voters are the people who elected Rick Scott and Allen West, and other teabaggers. I don't think anything occurs to most of them until after the damage is done.
Snave: Conservatives must be having one giant mass orgasm right about now.
Randal: B&D and S&M.
I guess we should trust the government more being they are so not corrupt. They spend our money so wisely without waste and always have an endless amount of cash flow. Oh and they pay their taxes.
Why go to a prison when you can live in one openly.
Lisa, shut the fuck up and go change the oil in the fryer.
Lisa, shut the fuck up and go change the oil in the fryer.
Anon-So if that's the best answer you have I must have hit a nerve.
Sorry to have offended your ever loving big trusting,tax cheating uber rich elitist government who is all for the little guy while enjoying the fruits of our labor for their own self sacrificing needs.
I bet Nancy Pelosi hates her 62% wealth increase.
Lisa, maybe I misunderstood your comment, but are you suggesting that living in our country is like living in a prison? If so, have you given thought to living elsewhere? 8-)
I don't believe you would find any other countries on Earth that offer the individual freedoms and liberties the United States does. I have never been in prison, but I find the thought that living in this country could be like living in a prison to be very foreign.
Warts and all, I love our country and I love living here. Sorry if that disappoints you, with me being left-leaning and all... because Dems are supposed to hate America, right? At least that's the way it is according to some people, many of whom provide millions of listeners with sadly misguided talking points each and every day.
We all care about America. We just have different ways of looking at its problems and how to fix them. What's better? To see America as a big picture in which the individuals are the parts that make up the whole and because of that, should work together to make the whole country healthy? Or to see it as a place where everyone should look out for their individual needs first and foremost, like sink or swim? Well, I see the country as a huge community. But that's just me.
We all look out for ourselves, but some of us are more inclined to not always ask first what our country can do for us, but more like what we can do for our country... and some of us are also inclined to believe that everyone does better when everyone does better.
I'm not saying you are always wrong because you subscribe to right-wing ideologies. I will say I am right, though... at least when I say it's all relative. That's one thing of which I'm absolutely certain.
I also feel fairly certain that running prisons for profit is a bad idea. In order to keep the prisons profitable, the owners will have to keep the prisons full. As the industry grows, there will be more of a demand for prisoners. People with money influence lawmakers. Do you not see those with money putting pressure on lawmakers to increase penalties for minor infractions, to make more things illegal, to increase the lengths of prison sentences? (In other words, for our country to become increasingly punitive?) Our prison population has already topped 2 million. Do you not see a problem here?
Snave-I don't believe in prison for certain crimes either.
What we should do is put more people who are domestic abusers behind bars when they are a known threat. I don't want pot smokers or petty dealers in prison,but honestly do you believe those are the crimes that are the majority of prisoners?
We also have alot of street gangs that has increased over the years as well with illegal and legal immigration who commit violent crimes.
Do you know you can't move to Canada if you have as much as a DWI? They don't want you and they shouldn't have to.
What I think is a problem is we have alot of people here and I know China has less people in prison but they also have a higher execution rate so that doesn't count.
What I meant by living in prison is giving government too much power beaus the bigger the government the smaller the people.
things always start out for the betterment of all but it is impossible to be all things to all people . Someone will always be disenfranchised . We are good people which is what makes us great,not a big government.
I just don't like the idea of government deciding who they are going to influence with tax payer money. No business can ever be as big as government. And the bigger you are the more corruption there is.
If you rally love the country then you must believe the reason is there were limits set on government and more power to the people.
We even have some democrats now concerned about our financial situation.
I don't believe in prison for profit but I don't believe in government for profit either.
I don't think dems hate America I just think their party can't survive without all their programs.
Of course we should help those in need but we should also be more diligent as well. If a business fails it is at their expense but if government fails it is as its citizens expense.
What is the point of giving everyone all they need if over time there will be nothing for anyone?
Don't I have the right to be passionate to what I believe as you are to what you believe?
Altough I dn't recall telling anyone to shut the fuck up did I?
Hey, I didn't tell you to STFU. I tend not to say that kind of thing to others. I prefer a gentle, questioning approach. I feel I can get my point across just as easily that way. Sometimes I'm not as concise because of this, but oh well.
The prison population in America has increased twelvefold since 1980. The "war on drugs" has been going on for about that long. Has violence (or have violent crimes) in the U.S. gone up twelvefold in the last 30 years? All due to immigrants and gangs?
"No business can ever be as big as government."
I have to wonder about that, when business influences our politics the way it does. To think a large-scale "prison business" would not exert some kind of influence on policy-making? I guess I trust business to work in the public's best interests about as much as you trust government to. 8-)
"If you rally love the country then you must believe the reason is there were limits set on government and more power to the people."
There is nothing I "must believe" in order to love America. I follow no prescribed set of rules that dictates how I should love my country. When it comes to just about anything, when someone says there is a certain way others have to believe in order to be correct, good, worthy, or whatever... I have learned to avoid such people like the plague, or at least as much as I can. It just makes life a lot more enjoyable.
"What is the point of giving everyone all they need if over time there will be nothing for anyone?"
I disagree with that, in that that is not the point. The point is not to "give everyone all they need". It is for all of us who have what we need to pitch in and help those who truly do need it, so we can keep doing that and there will always be something for everyone. Those who don't need extra help shouldn't be getting it.
That sounds like a good way to trim some waste. Then again, who gets to decide who needs help and who doesn't? I would rather have me deciding that than maybe having you decide it. 8-)
Like I said, it's all relative. People believe what they want to believe, and we can all be just as passionate about what we believe as we want to... even when the passion gets in the way of reason sometimes.
Leave it to Capitalism to commodify and profiteer off of everything in the solar system, including prisoners.
As a business model, it pays to keep the war on drugs going, re-institute debtor prisons, expand prosecutable crimes, and so on. Everyone is then a potential convict and potential source of the revenue stream.
xraymike79: That's the trouble with capitalism when it's taken to an extreme. Sick people, "illegal" drug users, prisoners -- they're all just so much chattel to be squeezed for maximum profits.
Post a Comment
<< Home