Prison Profiteers: extracting billions by exploiting prisoners and their families

Some of this has been circumvented by guards, who have taken it upon themselves to smuggle cell phones into prisons, to gang members, I guess for bribes. I’ve seen multiple news stories like this in the past year.

OK…I’ll let others handle the much-warranted outrage and justified fury over all this. Just two points to check out to get your blood boiling even more.

  1. Guess which lobbies and unions have been behind nearly every hideous, draconian federal minimum sentencing statute inflicted on this supposedly free country. Look it up and you will see there are a few common threads. Its like Kafka and Orwell teamed up to create the ultimate dystopian fictional nightmare…except this is reality.

  2. The railroading starts young: a lot of state prison planners use inner city literacy rates for kindergarteners and first-graders to plan for future “occupancy.” This nauseating application of “data mining” is then used to contract out to the profiteers.

The “corrections industry” needs to be driven from existence. It’s promoters and enablers deserve a long, unpleasant taste of its service.

3 Likes

Do you have more information on your second point?

In August the FCC took a major step in the right direction by announcing a rate cap on long-distance calls made by inmates. It was a hard-fought victory, albeit a limited one.

Why limited? To quote the Washington Post,

In a 2 to 1 decision, the agency voted to immediately cap how much prison phone-service providers can charge the recipients of an inmate’s call at 25 cents per-minute so that a 15-minute long-distance call won’t exceed $3.75. The FCC also banned the providers from charging extra fees to connect a call or use a calling card.

Given the additional technical requirements – for monitoring, recording, restricting calls, etc. – I can’t see $0.25/minute as being too much…

Not really trolling, but how many poor people employ others ??? Just asking. . .

Your question seems rhetorical, but I can’t perceive its point. Could you please paraphrase? What are you trying to say?

Simply put, by definition, employers are “rich” as compared to their employees. Otherwise they wouldn’t have the coin to PAY employees.

As it applies to the prison system, I have no problem requiring prisoners working to pay their keep if they want any privileges more that enough nutrition to sustain life, a suitable shelter to sleep in, and basic medical care as required.

PRIVILEGES should be earned.

I see. But what I think you’re not seeing in the forest, so focused are you on the trees.

“Private prison companies openly admit that their profits depend on locking up more people.”

2 Likes

Which would require conviction by a court of law and jury of peers.

On the other hand, given the proliferation of laws and regs, we’re ALL felons every day, it only takes an interested prosecutor to put you away. . .

The solution is obvious, and comes to us from the Bard of Avon: Kill all the lawyers (grin)

Fair question. It’s been cited frequently over the past decade by organizations working specifically in early child development for disadvantaged communities and groups. I know this because I used to work for one of those organizations. I do not have current stats, but it shouldn’t be hard to dig them up.

Assuming a person actually has a court trial. Plea bargains are becoming more common, but some argue that it is less a matter of “guilty” vs “innocent” and more about avoiding harsh sentences: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/us/tough-sentences-help-prosecutors-push-for-plea-bargains.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

1 Like

Again, that’s a LAWYER problem. Prosecutors, and ESPECIALLY Prosecutors with access to a Grand Jury, combined with a maze of laws and regulations which it’s impossible NOT to be found of a technical violation of one or another, got us here,

It’s because Lawyers are making the laws, as opposed to other professions that actually have to deliver a product or service at day’s end. There are no effects to a prosecutor losing a given case. . .

Only the ones that spend their money.

Spoken like one of the many “prison shouldn’t be fun!” people who have no idea what being in prison is like (hint: nothing like Goodfellas) or how running a prison works.

Privileges are a tool for compliance. They’re something that can be taken away. The carrot of granting privileges to someone who hasn’t experienced them yet is not nearly as effective as the stick of rescinding existing privileges.

Sure, you could lock everyone into bare cells with nothing to read or watch or listen to or do for 23 hours a day, but those prisoners are going to go insane and be a lot more difficult (and thus expensive) to manage. Satellite TV and a weight room are cheaper than hiring and equipping a bunch of additional guards, underpaid as they are.

Which brings up a second point: Where on the hierarchy of needs do you draw the cutoff line? Food and shelter are a given, but what about psychological needs? If there remains in this country any pretense of rehabilitation, or if we can at least agree that we’d prefer released prisoners to be fit for society instead of irreversibly damaged basket cases with no viable options but to recidivize, the forced labor gulags you’re advocating are not the way to go.

2 Likes

I think of it more as basics until you comply with standards. As you meet one level of compliance, another level of rewards opens up. Want more than beans’n’weenies and water ? Meet a standard. Want an hour of TV a day ? Meet a HIGHER standard. Reward good behavior. . .

I hear there’s this new organization that works with phone companies to monitor calls for free.

1 Like

You must have had a date the other night. Salgak is our new Overconfident Conservative trolley, who somehow thinks one simply strolls into bbs with tired yuppie talking points (The dems refuse to let the country debate! Why are they silencing the people!?). Other commenters have suggested a side bar for Salgak- type riffs, sort of like the kids’ table at Thanksgiving. Here’s a comment thread nearly totally derailed:

2 Likes

Ah yes, because I’m conservative, I MUST be a Troll. It USED to be, because my initial responses were in one thread, that proved I was a paid troll.

How about actually debating, instead of calling names ??

Well, it isn’t free yet, but the way its value is dropping it may soon be.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.