USA: Considering Prison Reform

[Kreskin]

Senate considering big changes

The Senate is considering a prison reform bill that "reins in some of the most draconian sentencing provisions that for a generation have sent America's prison population soaring," write Alex Altman and Maya Rhodan of TIME.com.

According to that article, the bill would do the following:

*Remove the "three strikes" law that calls for mandatory life sentences
*Allow 6,500 crack cocaine offenders to challenge their sentences by retroactively applying a 2010 bill that leveled the penalties for crack and powder cocaine
*Reduce solitary confinement in juvenile facilities
^Empower judges to use more discretion by abandoning mandatory sentencing guidelines

The timeline for when the bill might move to the House is unclear, but supporters are hopeful its bipartisan support will help its chances of becoming law.


What's going on with prison reform in America? - CNN.com

 

[MHz]

Anything about making them a soup kitchen at the same time?

 

[tay]

The nation’s second-largest private prison corporation is holding New Mexico politicians hostage by threatening to close unless the state or federal authorities find 300 more prisoners to be warehoused there.

“The company that has operated a private prison in Estancia for nearly three decades has announced it will close the Torrance County Detention Facility and lay off more than 200 employees unless it can find 300 state or federal inmates to fill empty beds within the next 60 days,” the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper reported last week.

The paper said that county officials issued a statement citing the threatened closure and emphasized that every virtually every politician in the region, from county officials to state officials to congressmen, were scurrying to save jobs—as opposed to shutting a privatized prison by an operator that has been sued many times for sexual harassment, sexual assault, deaths, use of force, physical assaults, medical care, injuries and civil rights violations.

This is a big issue for us,” Torrance County manager Belinda Garland told the Santa Fe newspaper.

It quoted Jonathan Burns, a spokesman for CoreCivic — formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America — as saying, while, “The city of Estancia and the surrounding community have been a great partner to CoreCivic for the last 27 years . . . a declining detainee population in general has forced us to make difficult decisions in order to maximize utilization of our resources.”

This is a perfect snapshot of what’s upside-down with privatization: the lack of economic opportunities and politicians who genuflect at providing jobs, regardless of the larger social implications, pushing law enforcement into the dirty business of ramping up arrests and convictions so private firms and shareholders can make more money.

The statement by county officials said that most of the 700-bed facility’s prisoners were federal inmates. Company officials in local meetings said federal sentencing reforms has led to a shrinking prisoner population.

The paper reported, “‘The company told the county it has been holding fewer federal detainees for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Garland said. ‘We’re reaching out to anybody that can help us… We hate to see this facility close.’”

The elected officials who have been asked to find more prisoners include New Mexico Democrats, U.S. Sen. Tom Udall and Rep. Michelle Lujan-Grisham. The county said the town of Estancia would annually lose $700,000 in commerce and the county would lose $300,000 in tax revenues if the prison closed in late September, the New Mexican reported.

Private prison demands New Mexico and feds find 300 more prisoners in 60 days or it will close - Salon.com

 

[Danbones]

That's right! Don't solve problems like crime! Monitize them and grow the business!

 

[Jinentonix]

This is why those who play political partisan are so pathetic. This problem stems all the way back to Clinton, at least. Both parties have been in power for years and both have created legislation AND/or failed to scrap legislation that allowed this gross assault on human and civil rights.
Obama had 8 years to make the necessary changes but chose not to. And why would he? It provided him a great opportunity to play the politics of division game while a steady stream of Black people (and others) were being railroaded into privately run prisons in the name of capitalism.
Both sides have been complicit in this and no amount of spin is going to change that fact.

For-profit prisons. Who didn't see the problem(s) with that coming?

 

[Walter]

For-profit prisons. Who didn't see the problem(s) with that coming?

Yeah, cuz gubmint always does things better.

 

[tay]

was almost lunchtime inside the country’s largest kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, on May 12, 2008. The meatpackers, mostly migrants from Guatemala and Mexico, wore earplugs to block out the noise of the machinery and couldn’t hear the two black helicopters hovering overhead or the hundreds of armed federal immigration agents closing in around them until the production line stopped. One worker tried to flee with his knives, stabbing himself in the leg when he was pushed to the ground. “They rounded us up toward the middle like a bunch of chickens,” a 42-year-old Guatemalan worker later recalled. “Those who were hiding were beaten and shackled.”


Nearly 400 workers were arrested in the bust, which cost $5 million and was then the biggest workplace immigration raid in US history. They were driven to the National Cattle Congress, a fairground in Waterloo, where several federal judges would handle their cases over nine business days. Hearings were held in trailers and a dance hall. Cots were set up for the defendants in a nearby gymnasium. At the time, undocumented immigrants caught in raids like this were usually charged with civil violations and then deported. But most of these defendants, shackled and dragging chains behind them, were charged with criminal fraud for using falsified work documents or Social Security numbers. About 270 people were sentenced to five months in federal prison, in a process that one witness described as a “judicial assembly line.”


Overseeing the process was Judge Linda R. Reade, the chief judge of the Northern District of Iowa. She defended the decision to turn a fairground into a courthouse, saying the proceedings were fair and unhurried. The incident sparked allegations of prosecutorial and judicial misconduct and led to congressional hearings. Erik Camayd-Freixas, an interpreter who had worked at the Waterloo proceedings, testified that most of the Spanish-speaking defendants had been pressured to plead guilty. Rep. Zoe Lofgren said the unconventional process seemed “like a cattle auction, not a criminal prosecution in the United States of America.”


Yet amid the national attention, one fact didn’t make the news: Before and after the raid, Reade’s husband owned stock in two private prison companies, and he bought additional prison stock five days before the raid, according to Reade’s financia disclosure thics experts say these investments were inappropriate and may have violated the Code of Conduct for United States Judges.


A Federal Judge Put Hundreds of Immigrants Behind Bars While Her Husband Invested in Private Prisons – Mother Jones