This is Really Nasty Crony Corporatism & It’s Putting Our Sons and Daughters in Prison

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) in 2012 sent 48 governors letters offering to buy & operate their state prisons for a 20-yr contract which included a 90% occupancy rate guarantee for the entire term.

Everyone’s in favor of reducing crime and getting criminals off the street, but contracts between private corporations and the public sector insuring up 100% occupancy rates (as in Arizona) just smells bad.

“America has more prisoners than engineers or nursing assistants, secondary school teachers, construction laborers, childcare workers, physicians & surgeons, social workers or lawyers.”

Could this where mandatory prison sentencing came from? Or why the ineffective ‘War on Drugs’ (like pissing in the wind) remains in effect? This Huffington Post article sites studies showing that mandatory minimums fail to reduce crime, waste taxpayer money and violate common sense.

But back to the guaranteed occupancy rates imbedded in prison contracts. According to Zero Hedge at least 65% of all contracts with the public sector have “occupancy guarantees”. It goes like this. A prison has a 98 or 100% occupancy guarantee, the ACLU yahoos scream abuse due to overcrowding so officials throw open the gates while murderers, rapists, check-kiters & petty criminals all go free. Then law enforcement gets busy and fills the joint to occupancy again and pretty soon all of us & our kids have prison records. Crazy huh?

Oh and if they can’t find enough criminals, the taxpayer are left holding the bag for the guaranteed prison profits. Just another government policy decision insuring corporate profits. Ya think unions were involved in this scam?

Aloha, Mikie ~just a blogger (fightin’ like a girl)