(Great guest post from a long-time BOR reader, featuring content from Cuentame. We hope you will be hearing more from both Nick and Cuentame in the future. - promoted by Katherine Haenschen)
What happens if you privatize prisons is that you have a large industry with a vested interest in building ever-more prisons." -- Molly Ivins, 2003
For the past three years, the small West Texas town of Littlefield has had to come up with $65,000 a month to service a loan on an empty prison it never needed. To avoid defaulting on its prison loan, Littlefield has laid off workers, cut every department's budget, raised property taxes, increased fees, raided its municipal sewer and water fund, and even delayed its purchase of a new police car.
With just 6,507 residents during the 2000 census, Littlefield did not need a new prison. The city's elected officials decided to build one anyways. Littlefield issued $10 million in revenue bonds for construction of a 310-bed for-profit detention center as part of the city's economic development strategy in 1999. Revenue bonds are a special type of municipal bond that do not require voter approval, because they are backed by the expected revenue a project will generate. Littlefield's politicians built the prison believing it would pay for itself, pump money into the local economy, and expand job opportunity.
The nonprofit organization Cuéntame produced the excellent video below about the experience of Littlefield, Texas with speculative for-profit prison construction. Take a look:
As a result of this experience, Littlefield's bond rating was downgraded to junk status, and Littlefield taxpayers were saddled with millions in debt after discovery of mismanagement by for-profit prison operator Geo Group led the Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC) to terminate its contract and remove its prisoners in 2009. When IDOC cancelled its contract, Geo Group bailed on Littlefield by terminating its contract and laying off 74 workers.
The Idaho Department of Corrections discovered Geo Group's mismanagement when it conducted an audit of the Littlefield lock-up. The audit was prompted by the suicide of Randall McCullough, one of Idaho's inmates, at the prison. McCullough had been placed in solitary confinement for more than a year as administrative punishment for a fight that was never criminally prosecuted. The IDOC audit revealed that Geo Group chronically understaffed its facility. On the night that McCullough died, the facility was so short on staff that the warden worked the midnight shift.
Of course, extreme right-wing organizations like the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council defend privatization of prisons, schools and social services by peddling sanctimonious twaddle about the "innovation," "competition" and "efficiency" associated with private entrepreneurship. The most common way for corporations like Geo Group and Corrections Corporation of America to save money in running a prison is to cut guards' salaries, though (innovative!).
It turns out that when prison guards are paid wages as low as grocery store cashiers and fast food workers, they don't stick around very long. And when prisons are understaffed or have high turnover, they end up with inexperienced staff, higher rates of prisoner-on-guard assaults, more escapes, and more contraband violations as evidenced by higher rates of positive urine tests for drug use. Or, they might just be plain understaffed, à la Geo Group.
I would continue from here, but Molly does it better:
"The right says that, in the private sector, pay and performance are related. I look at the CEOs of American corporations, and if there's a connection between pay and performance there, I missed it.
What you get when you privatize and outsource is something like the Department of Defense and the military-industrial complex. We spend $399 billion a year on defense, and if you think that money is well spent because much of it gets run through defense contractors, you have not been paying attention.
DOD is the happy home of the $700 hammer, the endless cost overrun, and the revolving door, with accompanying conflicts of interest and dubious contracts. It's a fiscal nightmare. The Pentagon once had to announce that it couldn't account for $17 billion.
You get nightmare public policy consequences, as well. What happens if you privatize prisons is that you have a large industry with a vested interest in building ever-more prisons. The result is even more idiocy, like the three-strikes law and long terms for small-time drug possession."
--Molly Ivins, 2003 Syndicated Column
Amen.
The video in this post was produced by Cuéntame. Cuéntame is an online platform where the Latino community and the public at large can address social, political and cultural topics through social media, videos, interviews, and docu-series. Cuéntame translates "count me" or "tell me your story," and Cuéntame facilitates conversations about everything from soccer and music to immigrant detention and the anti-immmigrant legislation crafted by extreme right-wing, corporate-funded organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council. Find out more about Cuéntame or tell your own story by following Cuéntame on Facebook or Twitter.
We're working to get as many signatures as possible on a facebook petition to end immigrant family detention. If you don't know anything about immigrant family detention, or if you're, like, "Whoa?! Family Detention?! Who the hell would do that?" please see the background I've posted below the fold.Our positions are:
1. Immigrant children and their families should not be incarcerated while awaiting their immigration hearings, and
2. non-punitive alternatives to detention should be utilized.
Signing this petition will indicate your support for our cause, and allow us to contact you with any action events in your area.
Tonight Wednesday, January 14, 2009
5:30pm - 7:30pm
Nuevo Leon Restaurant
1501 East 6th Street
Austin, TX
From Mike's Facebook event:
Food will be provided and there will be a cash bar. It's going to be a great time so please come out. This will also be our first time back to Nuevo Leon since our wedding night party on November 8th. I couldn't think of a better and more appropriate location to launch my re-election bid to Place 2 on the City Council.
(This is a really useful "how-to" post. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
I got to sit in on a great meeting several months ago with Attorney Joe Larsen, a Freedom of Information Act of Texas Board Member who has worked on open records cases. Mr. Larsen gave us some useful information on the Texas Public Information Act. For more information on Open Records Requests, I recommend going to the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas website here.
Here are some rough notes from the meeting. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
What is public information? Public information is information created, assembled, or maintained by or on behalf of a governmental body, or in transaction of governmental business. Public information may be kept on behalf of a governmental body, and it may extend to the hand of a vendor who maintains a governmental body's records. A governmental body may delegate responsibility of recordkeeping to an outside body.
(This happened at Wednesday's University Democrats meeting. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
The University Democrats voted overwhelmingly Wednesday night to sign on to a letter respectfully urging Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton, a Democrat, to take away the 24/7 investigative office he voluntarily provided Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in January.
Before UDems voted on the initiative, two Captains from the Sheriff's Department faced off against two defense attorneys (including Nicole True, John Courage's daughter) opposed to the Sheriff's expansion of collaboration with ICE.
In signing onto the letter, the University Democrats joined Austin families, churches, students, and community organizations concerned that the Sheriff's decision undermines public safety, threatens fundamental rights, separates families, and increases the fiscal burden on Austin residents.
Late last year, ICE was given unprecedented access to the Travis County Jail by Sheriff Hamilton. This new proposal allows ICE to screen the immigration status of everyone who enters the county jail. This includes those who are arrested by Austin Police, a department that maintains a longstanding policy of not asking immigration status of crime victims, witnesses or suspects, to ensure public safety. Immigrant detainees at the Travis County Jail may be accused of any crime, including many who are arrested for simple Class C misdemeanors, including traffic violations such as speeding or j-walking.
In thirteen days, the deadline to register to vote in the March 4th Texas primary will pass, and 80% of the country will prepare to vote on Super Tuesday. That means we Longhorns have fewer than two weeks to register Texans to vote and call early states as part of the biggest get out the vote effort in American history. Your voice is needed at this defining moment.
We need your help to make phonecalls to voters on the West coast. If you are willing to contribute some of your time to Barack Obama's campaign, we want you.
Please bring your laptops and cell phones and join us in the Forty Acres room of the Texas Union between 9pm and 11pm during one or more of the next 13 nights. We will be in the forty acres room every night until February 4th. If you can't meet us in the Union, but would still like to help us make calls, please respond to this email with "Unity" in the subject line, any message you wish to incude, and your name and phone number in the body.
You don't have to have worked on a campaign before in order to help. We need everyone to speak up for change we can believe in.
Also-- Remember that the deadline for registering to vote in the Texas Primary is February 4. Make sure you, your family, and your friends will be registered to vote by the February 4th deadline. We can register you to vote at the phonebank if you are not yet registered in Travis County.
The next University of Texas Students for Barack Obama meeting is next Tuesday, January 29th in Burdine 208 from 6 to 7 PM.
If you're in Austin this weekend, swing by the Obama tailgating party Saturday afternoon. We'll promote Senator Obama's Return to Austin on Saturday, Nov. 17 by flyering tailgate areas, and then we'll watch the game and enjoy some hearty Texas BBQ.
Saturday, Nov. 10th
Longhorn BBQ & Tailgate for Barack Texas v. Texas Tech (Game Starts at 2:30pm CST)
