Corporate Welfare at its Best!
Welcome to the Humpday Hall of Shame â€" every Wednesday we have highlighted the private prison industry’s influence on public policy through campaign contributions, lobbying, and the revolving door of public and private corrections.
We are ending the year by asking for your support.
THE TIME IS NOW!
“To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.â€
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Do you find the buying and selling of inmates and immigrant detainees in this country as repugnant as I do?
Do you find it disturbing that the private prison industry is the chief architect of bills like Arizona’s SB1070, a bill that ensures the growth of for-profit detention beds?
Are you horrified by the fact that the majority of states allow the shackling of women prisoners in their third trimester and during labor and childbirth?
Do you wonder what happens to elderly women inmates in prisons that are run for profit?
Do you question who will stand up against this multi-billion dollar industry that gorges itself on our tax-dollars?
Join the struggle today by making a special, tax-deductible year-end gift to Grassroots Leadership. https://www.chi-cash-advance.com/sforms/appeal796/Contribute.aspx
Email me at redwing@grassrootsleadership.org or Bob Libal at blibal@grassrootsleadership.org and find out how you can help in your community.
Do something. Today. Please.
In ten or in twenty years from now when you are asked what you did to stop the atrocity of for-profit incarceration, what will you say?
Thank you so much for your interest and for your support. It is my great hope that we will be successful in 2012 and that we will make a real difference. Please, join us this this radical act of democracy.
Donna Red Wing
Executive Director
Grassroots Leadership
http://www.grassrootsleadership.org/blog/2011/12/humpday-hall-of-shame-ignoring-evil/
How Florida is in on the buying and selling of immigrant detainees:
By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ
updated 11/20/2011 8:34:14 AM ET
SOUTHWEST RANCHES, Florida â€" In one of South Florida's upscale, rural enclaves, where peacocks roam and horse trails are as common as sidewalks, town leaders decided to bring in much of their money from an unusual business: a prison.
Only the leaders of Southwest Ranches kept their plans quiet from residents for almost a decade, and the project has now ballooned into what would be among the federal government's largest immigrant detention centers.
The town would have to pay $150,000 each year to keep the prison, but officials say the town would turn a profit by getting 4 percent of what U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement pays the company operating the prison to hold inmates there.
Many residents finally caught wind of the idea this year, when the immigration agency announced a tentative deal, and they're angry. They've held protests at public meetings, contemplated whether to recall the mayor before his March election and whether to amend the town charter to make it easier to fire the city attorney pushing the deal.
The objection over the prison has created an odd set of allies among the town's affluent residents, many of whom are wary of illegal immigrants, and longtime activists who fight for immigrants, legal or not.
USDA mandates healthier school lunches .
.
. Story: Deportation cases of illegal immigrants to be reviewed
The proposed facility is part of the federal government's new plan to move immigrants from jails to detention centers it says are better for holding people with no criminal background. The centers are also supposed to be easier to reach for detainees' relatives and lawyers.
Plans are in the works for other facilities near San Antonio, Texas, and in Essex County, New Jersey, and Orange County, California. But none of those proposals has drawn the outrage seen in Southwest Ranches, the Fort Lauderdale suburb where telenovelas are filmed in the shaded ranches, and wealthy developers, Miami Dolphins pro football players and others seek privacy and a country lifestyle.
Diana Bramhall is one of 7,000 people living in the town. She trains horses and grows an array of exotic avocados at the Southwest Ranches home where she has lived for 18 years. She hadn't heard of the prison plan until last year.
"I don't want my town built on the back of the detention of illegal immigrants," Bramhall said. "I think there are better ways to make money."
Lynne Sladky / AP
Diana Bramhall walks with one of her horses at her home in Southwest Ranches, Fla.
But according to Mayor Jeff Nelson and others involved at the time, the plan for some kind of prison run by Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private prison operator in the U.S., was always integral to Southwest Ranches' ability to survive.
Nelson believes the plan has been out in the open, and officials list more than two dozen public meetings over the last decade where it was discussed. But residents insist the town did little to notify them.
An announcement for a Nov. 5 meeting about the detention center with ICE, CCA and Southwest Ranches officials was listed on the town website only as an "information meeting."
When the town incorporated in 2000, leaders annexed a 24-acre parcel of nearby land, sandwiched between a small women's prison and a dump. CCA had purchased the land just three years before. It was a curious move. The land wasn't connected by a road to the rest of the town. Many residents never even drove by it.
The town first tried to build a 700-bed county jail. By 2005, Southwest Ranches and CCA settled on a detention facility. The proposal was part of a growing trend among private prison contractors to move away from state and local facilities to federal ones. ICE facilities alone now provide about 12 percent, or nearly $200 million of CCA's total annual revenue, according to company filings.
Southwest Ranches and CCA sent a draft plan to ICE for review in 2007, two years before the agency officially put out its latest call for new proposals, according to records obtained by The Associated Press through a public information request.
'Not really a selling point'
In the latest version of the deal, calling for some 1,500 beds, Southwest Ranches could earn more than $1.5 million annually if ICE keeps the center filled year round. CCA officials say the number is closer to $400,000, in part because many beds may not always be filled, with another $400,000 in real estate taxes.
The 13-square-mile town, which prides itself on low taxes, needs the revenue, recently telling the federal government it was struggling to meet its $9 million budget.
"We'll get a commission on every bed, I get that," said Bramhall. "But it bothers me that for my city, (such a large section) is now going to be from a jail. It's not really a selling point."
Job creation has been a selling point for CCA, local and federal officials.
"Beyond the detention professionals, you're also looking at a number of other professions: medical professionals, training professionals, food services professionals, chaplains. It's like a small city unto itself," CCA spokesman Steve Owen said.
Advertise | AdChoices
.
Yet nearly two-thirds of the estimated 300 permanent jobs would be for guards.
"No one is going to want a job there. These are half million (dollar) homes. People here earn $100,000 plus," said Ryan Greenberg, whose home in the neighboring city of Pembroke Pines sits across the road from the proposed site â€" closer than any home in Southwest Ranches itself.
At the Nov. 5 meeting with officials, residents echoed her sentiments. "We don't want your jobs!" they bellowed.
What they did want was to know why their own officials had been dodging them.
The CCA land wasn't included in maps published when the city was founded and the full city charter with the CCA lots isn't available on the city's website. It can only be found in the original resolution passed by state lawmakers in Tallahassee.
Outcry
In January, days after the new year, town officials and CCA quietly sought to double the detention center space and expand to up to 2,200 beds with little public notice, eventually abandoning the plan following an outcry.
Southwest Ranches' City Attorney Keith Poliakoff urged officials in a June email to keep a "cone of silence" following ICE's announcement about the tentative deal.
"I have been fully advised by our DC contacts that we should remain fully quiet on this one and to let our DC Leaders help without sparking a fire that will make it more difficult for them to assist," wrote Poliakoff, also a partner in one of the state's most powerful lobbying firms.
Top Florida lawmakers in Washington like U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson have written letters to ICE in support of the detention center, though Wasserman-Shultz in recent weeks has also encouraged more communication with the residents. According to town and CCA emails, Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio asked to attend a D.C. meeting on the plan, but CCA demurred, saying it would bring too much attention. Rubio has not taken a position on the proposal.
Meanwhile, neighboring officials from Pembroke Pines have publicly expressed outrage over the secretive process while quietly signing deals with the town not only promising not to interfere but also to provide water service and fire protection.
Residents say they are waiting to see the final deal. They have successfully fought off far smaller development efforts, including plans for streetlamps and a toddler playground. They once even tried to pay another town to construct affordable housing before the state relaxed its requirements.
The Florida Immigrant Coalition, which organized the initial opposition efforts, recently demanded ICE halt plans until an environmental review is done on the impact on the nearby Everglades.
The alliance between the residents and activists has not been without tension. At the meeting with ICE officials, an activist who broached the subject of detainee treatment in private prisons was roundly booed.
But Southwest Ranches resident Bill Di Scipio said those who advocate for immigrant rights and those in the community who want more people deported, are united on this one.
"In the opposition to the prison, both sides of the immigration debate are represented," he said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45374657/ns/us_news-life/t/upscale-fla-town-fight-over-immigrant-prison/#
Quote“To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.â€
Martin Luther King, Jr.
I've always loved this quote.
Gee, just think how we could save money on our police force! Just privatize the force too and pay them so much money for each arrest. We could lower or taxes ( or not be able to pay them because we were in jail)!
Let's privatize our armed forces too and just contract it all out to Blackwater. That would save taxes and bring world peace too.
Talk about perverse incentives!
Dear Floridian,
Some Florida legislators are rushing full steam ahead to enact legislation, specifically SB 2036 and SB 2038, that would privatize governmental services and agencies without public input. They are trying to pass these bills as early as this week.
This scheme starts with immediate plans to privatize 29 prisons in 18 counties in south and central Florida with no exit strategy should things go wrong. No other state in our nation has given contracts to private prisons at even close to this level.
The bills would squander taxpayer money to reward political donors and drive up unemployment. And as a corrections officer I can say with first-hand knowledge that privatization will undermine public safety.
Did you know that private prisons do not chase escaped inmates past the perimeter like the public prisons do, which means more escaped prisoners in our communities? And private prison corporations have often failed to live up to legal requirements in the past. This bill will just make the problem worse.
That's why I created a petition to the Florida State House and Senate and Governor Rick Scott on SignOn.org, which says:
I oppose SB 2036 and SB 2038, bills being pushed by corporate lobbyists to privatize governmental services and agencies without public input. These bills will compromise public safety, cause unemployment, and hurt communities and small businesses across Florida.
Will you sign the petition? Click here to add your name, and then pass it along to your friends:
http://signon.org/sign/reject-floridas-privatizatio?source=mo&id=35242-4247247-QpcWjmx
Thanks!
â€"Christina Bullins
'They' tried to pull this crap on Division of Forestry a couple of years ago.The facts stymied the privatize assumptions.
Why not Privatize the Legislature!?....think of the Savings!....no Elections costs,yippee!!
When will we learn to simply not place certain outlooks in office in the first place??
The Senate is debating Rick Scott's prison privatization outrage RIGHT NOW. This bill will devastate small communities and working families’ economic stability and safety. But many in the Senate are ignoring this reality so they can funnel our tax dollars to the special interests that own corporate prisons.
If you haven't called your state senators yet, please call 877-274-0951 to get connected. Tell the person who answers:
“Vote NO on SB 2038.â€