By Jack Burns
The Trump Administration’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in a one paragraph memo to the Federal Bureau of Prisons Thursday, reversed an Obama administration directive to phase out and ultimately end private prison corporations’ partnership with the federal government. The Federal Bureau of Prisons contracts with the private prisons to house inmates largely convicted of immigration violations. “The 14 private prisons currently contracted by the federal government almost exclusively incarcerate low-risk inmates who were convicted of immigration offenses. The prisons house around 22,000 people at an annual cost of $600m,” writes The Guardian.
The move by Sessions came less than a year after the Justice Department concluded, as a result of an extensive investigation, the private prisons were unsafe, understaffed, overpopulated, and often placed prisoners in punitive solitary confinement, simply because the prison was overpopulated.
Their use is not without controversy and justifiable objections. The Orlando Sentinel explains the conflict of interests inherent in using private companies to punish prisoners convicted in the public’s judicial system. “Many public agencies use for-profit vendors, and rightly so,” meaning it’s one thing to use a wholesale food supplier to supply the prison’s cafeteria, “But incarcerating and rehabilitating a human being is not the same as delivering office paper,” writes the Sentinel. “In the case of criminal justice, the profit motive creates incentives,” to jail more prisoners by lobbying legislators to pass tougher penalties for laws, thereby bringing in more prisoners and keeping them in prison for longer jail sentences.
Those “values,” writes the Sentinel, “conflict with the public interest” and lead to the industry known as the Prison Industrial Complex, an industry which exists only if it has inmates to house. “The States should follow the lead of the Department of Justice and phase out private prisons,” concludes Orlando’s most influential newspaper.
In August, the Obama administration notified the private prisons their services would no longer be needed going forward. As a result, the nation’s largest prison corporations suffered financial losses when their stocks sank and were devalued, with one company losing over fifty percent of its share value. All that changed after Trump was elected, writes Forbes.
The term Private Prison is a farce from the get-go.
A truly Private prison would not be solely funded by taxpayer dollars. These Private prisons are nothing more than a fascist mixture of state and corporate, completely dependent upon the extortion factor of the state, i.e., taxation, as a means of their corporate sustenance.
A truly Private prison would have a negative incentive to boost its population for the simple fact that it is particularly expensive to house inmates. On the contrary, these fascist, or more aptly, corporatist prisons contractually require people to break the law!
It’s unclear, given the fact all the private prisons affected incarcerate illegal immigrants if the policy change is any indicator the Trump administration is preparing for mass deportations as some critics charge. Trump promised, during his campaign for presidency, to deport illegals, even those with family ties in the states, and force them to apply for readmission to the country.
But speculation already exists and is taking place in the stock market already as a result of Trump’s election as president. According to CBS News, “Mr. Trump’s directive to crack down on illegal immigration has led analysts to predict big profits in 2017 for major private prisons companies such as CoreCivic and Geo, due to increased demand for facilities. In fact, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst Tobey Sommer picked CoreCivic among one of his best investment picks for the year.”
Jack Burns writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared.
The drug war (especially on Blacks), corporate prisons, fedgov smuggling all kinds of contraband ….. sometimes I wonder where the US went so wrong. I know it would be far, far worse under Hillary (for the remaining time our country exists), but still, you gotta wonder why there’s no balance.
We have enough data points to know that private prisons are a dead end.
Are you implying we should exterminate murderers, pedophiles, cartel drug “el segundos?” And what about political terrorists? We can’t build enough and fund enough prisons to hold all these outlaws. I really would like to hear some solutions. This is a serious problem.
The real problem today is who is defining the terminology. The MSM calls alt-news ….. “fake news”. The terrorists is Washington waging illegal aggressive wars and acts of state terror across the world call people living in the third-world “terrorists”.
We need a world court for examining the behavior of governments. And yes; we should exterminate murderers, pedophiles in government. They must be held to a higher standard than the common man and woman.
The drug war, like 1920’s prohibition, is an utter failure. It should be stopped. Portugal shows us the way.
My bets are on the US Government being the Corporatized Walter White Laboratories, and the “war” is really just a war on the competition.
This flagrantly glaring modern SLAVERY sanctioned by the current Trump neoziocon administration Dept. of ‘Just Us’ Justice…nothing new for generational ‘slavers’ that now hide behind their dual-citizen passports ensconced in the rarefied air on their lofty perches in the penthouse towers of Walll street at the pyramid cap.
Trump has already shown that he’s not “same as the old boss”. He’s already shown that he’s not a politician His choices for cabinet positions are mostly either military or private business – not, again, politicians. However, this move is detrimental to civilization as a whole. But, one done by a highly regarded but still “just-us” politician. Trump has been in a month. I’ve never seen such whining. Give the man time, a chance. It’s got to be one hel l of a job to drain the swamp when you’re surrounded by it 24/7, and many in your party are as against you as the pretend other side.
You are captured in their net of ‘Offense /Defense’ logic…one side against another …politicians grandstanding on either wing of the same ol vulture…I feel sorry for you…. that you perceive life through this rose colored glass illusion…Everything he’s done so far is absolutely draconian as a proxy for the dual-citizens apologists for the Rothschild fiefdom of Israhell FIRST policies in stark contrast to US people.
So, his act of cutting the feet out from under obamacare by EO of directing the IRS to not acknowledge the line on 1040 that says whether you paid tribute to obamacare or not is the same as all the other prez? I know this isn’t the prison issue, but he at least is trying to fulfill some of his platform, take care, Lightwire News
Totally agree .Prisons should not be run by private enterprise . Prisons are not businesses nor should they be .I still think that trump might do much good for the US but this is a wrong move IMHO.
Any bets: Tramp owns a peice of one of these private prison co?????
More Americans from the USA are incarcerated than any other country in the world. That being said, I am torn on getting rid of Private Prisons. 1) they are newer, lets face it Levenworth is still open after a 100 years!
2) Government has checks and balances for them, which they don’t enforce on their own prisons.
3) And they offer GED programs and Faith base Dorms. And must publish GED results with the government.
That all being said Congress and the rest of the government State and Federal should not be allowed to own anything (stock included) with the prison industrial complex and its vendors.
Build more prisons .You will need them for all the corrupt politicians and pedos when they get exposed.
Don’t particularly like the idea of private prisons. However, if we used them solely for illegals, then fine.