Private Prisons Conflict With The Values of a Democracy « Nisqually Jail Impact The Issues of locking up inmates for profit examined in the academic study Prisons, Privatization, and Public Values. The critical decision to transfer jail management from public to private hands has been done very quietly in Thurston County. It is a big decision with the following issues. Opponents of private prisons argue that their incentive to cut costs to maximize profits presents a threat to the safety of prisoners, prison staff, and the public at large. They argue that private prisons tend to have fewer guards with less experience, which results in an increased rate of violent incidents behind bars. One study found violent incidents to be as much as 50% more frequent in private prisons (Greene, 2001). JUSTICE the industry has the incentive and the wherewithal to extend the amount of time convicts will remain in prison, and that this presents a threat to justice. Rehabilitation Legitimacy For-profit private prisons, jails or detention centers have no place in a democratic society.
The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery? Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million – mostly Black and Hispanic – are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don’t have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don’t like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells. There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. What has happened over the last 10 years? “The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. . . . Prison labor has its roots in slavery. Who is investing?
Private Prisons Private Prisons, Politics & Profits By Edwin Bender Early the morning of Aug. 12, 1999, Tennessee Gov. Don Sundquist took the podium at the 26th annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Councilto welcome attendees to Nashville. Following Sundquist in an afternoon session the next day, J. It is fitting that Sundquist, an ardent proponent of prison privatization, and Quinlan, whose company is the largest private-prison corporation in the United States, should be addressing lawmakers and staff about public policy at a conference funded in part by private-prison corporations and held in Nashville, home to CCA. A standard-bearer for prison privatization, Sundquist's early efforts supporting CCA and its proposal to take over the Tennessee state prison system were met by stiff opposition. The industry-friendly status quowas protected in Tennessee under Sundquist, as were CCA profits. The total? As part of its survey, the Institute looked at data from election cycles before 1998. Gov.
Prisoners per capita statistics - Countries compared Citation "All countries compared for Crime > Prisoners > Per capita", International Centre for Prison Studies - World Prison Brief. Aggregates compiled by NationMaster. Retrieved from "All countries compared for Crime > Prisoners > Per capita, International Centre for Prison Studies - World Prison Brief. 'All countries compared for Crime > Prisoners > Per capita, International Centre for Prison Studies - World Prison Brief. "All countries compared for Crime > Prisoners > Per capita", International Centre for Prison Studies - World Prison Brief. "All countries compared for Crime > Prisoners > Per capita", International Centre for Prison Studies - World Prison Brief. "All countries compared for Crime > Prisoners > Per capita, International Centre for Prison Studies - World Prison Brief. "All countries compared for Crime > Prisoners > Per capita", International Centre for Prison Studies - World Prison Brief. Luiz O.
US Has the Most Prisoners in the World WASHINGTON - Tough sentencing laws, record numbers of drug offenders and high crime rates have contributed to the United States having the largest prison population and the highest rate of incarceration in the world, according to criminal justice experts. A U.S. Justice Department report released on November 30 showed that a record 7 million people -- or one in every 32 American adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole at the end of last year. Of the total, 2.2 million were in prison or jail. According to the International Centre for Prison Studies at King's College in London, more people are behind bars in the United States than in any other country. The U.S. incarceration rate of 737 per 100,000 people in the highest, followed by 611 in Russia and 547 for St. Groups advocating reform of U.S. sentencing laws seized on the latest U.S. prison population figures showing admissions of inmates have been rising even faster than the numbers of prisoners who have been released.
Mass Incarceration and Criminal Justice in America A prison is a trap for catching time. Good reporting appears often about the inner life of the American prison, but the catch is that American prison life is mostly undramatic—the reported stories fail to grab us, because, for the most part, nothing happens. One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich is all you need to know about Ivan Denisovich, because the idea that anyone could live for a minute in such circumstances seems impossible; one day in the life of an American prison means much less, because the force of it is that one day typically stretches out for decades. It isn’t the horror of the time at hand but the unimaginable sameness of the time ahead that makes prisons unendurable for their inmates. The inmates on death row in Texas are called men in “timeless time,” because they alone aren’t serving time: they aren’t waiting out five years or a decade or a lifetime. That’s why no one who has been inside a prison, if only for a day, can ever forget the feeling.
The Return Of Debtor's Prisons: Thousands Of Americans Jailed For Not Paying Their Bills By Marie Diamond on December 13, 2011 at 5:20 pm "The Return Of Debtor’s Prisons: Thousands Of Americans Jailed For Not Paying Their Bills" Federal imprisonment for unpaid debt has been illegal in the U.S. since 1833. NPR reports that it’s becoming increasingly common for people to serve jail time as a result of their debt. Take, for example, what happened to Robin Sanders in Illinois. More than a third of all states now allow borrowers who don’t pay their bills to be jailed, even when debtor’s prisons have been explicitly banned by state constitutions. Sean Matthews, a homeless New Orleans construction worker, was incarcerated for five months for $498 of legal debt, while his jail time cost the city six times that much. Stories of surprise arrests for unpaid debt have been reported in states including Indiana, Tennessee and Washington. Since the start of 2010, judges have signed off on more than 5,000 arrest warrants since in nine counties alone.
The Silent Treatment Illustration: Brian Stauffer [Editor's note: This story first ran online in December, 2011. This is the updated version that appears in the March/April 2012 issue of the magazine.] "THIS IS A COLLECT CALL from a correctional institution," says the robotic female voice at the other end of the line. Felix is deaf, which is why he's using a TTY operator. Felix lost most of his hearing when he was still a kid. "Felix," I plead awkwardly. "I won't do it,'' he says finally. I repeat: "Do not kill yourself." "Yes, sir." After a few minutes, I pick up the phone and call Pat Bliss, a 69-year-old paralegal who for the past 15 years has served as Felix's advocate, crafting defense strategies, writing motions and briefs, and helping usher his case through the courts. Felix grew up in Tampa, one of six children in a working-class Cuban American family. A good-looking kid with a sweet demeanor, he managed to make it through school by getting girls to tutor him—or help him cheat.
Raise the Crime Rate Is it true that living in America has become riskier? In 2006, the political scientist Jacob Hacker published The Great Risk Shift, a progressive tract that appropriated the vocabulary of wealth management to show how thirty years of privatization and deregulation had abraded the security of the American family. Risks once borne by corporations and the government, Hacker noted, like unplanned health costs, are now the responsibility of Mom and Pop. Hacker focuses on hazards like cancer and credit exposure, but these are not the only perils we face. When it comes to rape, the numbers look even better: from 1980 to 2005, the estimated number of sexual assaults in the US fell by 85 percent. It shouldn’t surprise us that the country was more dangerous in 1990, at the height of the crack epidemic, than in 2006, at the height of the real estate bubble. Crime has not fallen in the United States—it’s been shifted. Hulin’s method for dealing with it was to kill himself. And then came crack.
Father's age seen as crucial to baby's disease risk See How Much Different Star Wars 7's Stormtroopers Will Look Here The design of the Stormtrooper has enjoyed several tweaks through the first six Star Wars movies, from the clean-cut white-and-black appearance in A New Hope to the color enhancements brought in for the digital prequels and the new Clone Wars TV shows. Maybe we ll have to start calling them "Chrome Troopers," based on the images shared on Indie Revolver, a site that has brought interesting visual scoops over the course of Episode VII s production schedule. The hood is a new addition for any sort of Stormtrooper that we have seen to date, though the site claims, "The chrome troopers do not actually wear a hood or covering in the film.
The Economics of Incarceration Nile BowieActivist Post For anyone paying attention, there is no shortage of issues that fundamentally challenge the underpinning moral infrastructure of American society and the values it claims to uphold. Under the conceptual illusion of liberty, few things are more sobering than the amount of Americans who will spend the rest of their lives in an isolated correctional facility – ostensibly, being corrected. The United States of America has long held the highest incarceration rate in the world, far surpassing any other nation. For every 100,000 Americans, 743 citizens sit behind bars. Presently, the prison population in America consists of more than six million people, a number exceeding the amount of prisoners held in the gulags of the former Soviet Union at any point in its history. Considering that today’s private prison population is over 17 times larger than the figure two decades earlier, the malleability of the judicial system under corporate influence is clear.
The Joy of Stats About the video Hans Rosling says there’s nothing boring about stats, and then goes on to prove it. A one-hour long documentary produced by Wingspan Productions and broadcast by BBC, 2010. A DVD is available to order from Wingspan Productions. Director & Producer; Dan Hillman, Executive Producer: Archie Baron. The change from large to small families reflects dramatic changes in peoples lives. Hans Rosling asks: Has the UN gone mad? Hans Rosling explains a very common misunderstanding about the world: That saving the poor children leads to overpopulation.
America Has Become Incarceration Nation | Civil Liberties December 21, 2006 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Two remarkable developments in Washington in the past week highlight the extent to which the United States has become the land of mass incarceration. First, the Supreme Court denied the appeal of Weldon Angelos for a first-time drug offense. The Angelos decision came on the heels of a Bureau of Justice Statistics report finding that there are now a record 2.2 million Americans incarcerated in the nation's prisons and jails. The composition of the prison population reflects the socioeconomic inequalities in society. While the United States has a higher rate of violent crime than comparable nations, the substantial prison buildup since 1980 has resulted from changes in policy, not changes in crime. With a new Democratic Congress in place, there is hope that long-festering criminal justice policy inequities can finally be addressed.
Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology | Andrew Young School of Policy Studies