From NCOC
Last week, it emerged that the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) had sent a letter to 48 states offering to take their prisons off their hand in exchange for a quick infusion of cash. The only small catch was that the states would have to sign a contract guaranteeing 90% occupancy of those prisons for the next 20 years…
For decades now, many small towns across America that fell on hard times were only too happy to embrace the prison industry as their economic salvation. The CCA’s website features an article from the Texas Monthly magazine, entitled “Yes in my Back Yard: How Eden learned to stop worrying and love its private prison”, about one such town called Eden, which is apparently besotted with its CCA-owned detention center. While the CCA has become one of the leading local employers, the article cheerfully notes that “At least half the town’s 2,500 residents live behind bars.”
The half of the town that is behind bars didn’t get to weigh in with their feelings about what it’s like to live in a prison town. Presumably, for them, Eden is no paradise. But the town’s free citizens, many of whom have jobs in the prison, will not hear a bad word said against it.
The nature of the work did not seem to bother anyone too much, apart from the admission that the town still loses young people who, apparently, don’t grow up dreaming of a prison job. All in all, though, the Texas Monthly reports so much enthusiasm about the prison that one can’t help considering the possibility that Eden may have hit on the economic model of the future whereby one half of the town is behind bars and the other half is gainfully employed to keep them that way. What’s not to like?
Disturbing. 1,250 people are so bad they’re tossed in the clink? What’s in the water?
A privately ran prison is one thing, but a contract guaranteeing you keep it filled. *cough*slavery*cough*
I am intrigued and pleased by the declining prison populations. Finally some good news. I can’t imagine how though since drug laws seem to be getting stiffer and stiffer and Congress as well as my own state legislators seem to make no end in coming up with new ideas for things they think the rest of us should not be allowed to do.
Maybe it’s the judges like the one in California that told the state they had to let prisoners out regardless because of overcrowding but I have a hard time imagining there ar many on the bench like that either.
Certainly after watching how the various law enforcement authorities have handled the Occupy groups, (whatever one may think of Occupy itself), it is not for a lack of fascist blackboot tactics. Using weapons that produce sound waves to disrupt brainwave patterns and in some cases causing permanent damage is not your 60′s peace suppression techniques.
I was in the National Guard I am ashamed to say in my late teens in the 70′s. We were taught restraint, this was after Kent State and we went through psychological tests and training to make sure if we ever had to be involved in crowd control we Very restrained.
I watch these Cops and they have not been trained to be restrained. Just the opposite in my opinion. These guys in every city I’ve observed video of seem to be trained to REACT instead of respond. There is a great deal of difference.
Sorry for going off topic there.
)
No worries about straying in topic at all. All of it is just various facets of the same problem. Corporatism seems to be the common driving force behind much of it. It is terrifying to trace the role of prison industry in our legislation. They have huge conventions touting all of the latest LEO gadgets and in the end, we tax-payers wind up footing the bill for the weapons that can be (have been, are) used against us. In the 5 years I spent working as a prisoner’s advocate, the overwhelming majority of prisoners start out being sentenced for minor offenses but often times wind up serving extra years that get added on for minor infractions of the rules. How easy to make it so prisoners can’t help but break rules; almost as easy as making so many laws free men end up bending or breaking them…
Drug offenders, immigrants, the mentally ill…they’re all just potential profit pools for corporations that (legally) traffic in human beings. CCA, GEOGroup, Emerald, MTC…those are just the top prison corporations. Add in influence from ‘feeder’ industry like food service (Aaramark, Sodexho) tactical gear, security services, medical services…there is a huge conglomeration of corporations that feed a huge circle of profit from one to the other. And their lobbying $$ and efforts are more than substantial enough to ensure the profit pool never goes dry!
90% occupancy of prisons for the next 20 years…ahh…now we know why the states are so keen to have UK citizens extradited to the US for crimes they have not even been proved to have committed with a potential prison sentence of 35 years if found guilty!!! And naturally UK courts don’t get a look-in when it comes to the evidence involved and the EU make all our decisions for us
Great! Awesome! Nice to know the US prisons are being so well filled in this way!!! Perhaps we could send the potential terrorist we have running around our country because the dear EU won’t let us kick him out!! But wait…he wouldn’t be going to the US prisons would he? Oh no…that’d be no good then…no good at all 
Just throw a few more UK citizens over the pond to make up the 90%!!! 
Actually, you should beware of prisons in the UK. Some of our biggest prison corporations are just subsidiaries of UK corporations; G4S Securior is one of your biggest operators over there and they also like to get contracts for the ‘detention centers’ for immigrants…just like their US branch, GeoGroup. Between them, both branches run private prisons in US, Europe…all the way down into Africa…
Pretty soon there won’t be anywhere safe to live out from under their influence!