 In
Pennsylvania, two
judges have been jailing youths in a kickback scheme that
netted them $1.6 million in exchange for sentencing youths to
for-profit youth detention centers.
But that's only the tip of the iceberg. The
role of government - privatization versus public sector ownership
- is a raging national debate. It spills into every issue area:
health care, stewardship of public lands, financial bailouts -
and now, jails and prisons.
Jails are being privatized - just one more
area where taxpayers are taken to the cleaners, considering direct
costs and long-term social costs to our communities.
Prisons for Profit.
In 1961, on leaving office, Eisenhower warned
about a "military-industrial complex." Today we see
the emergence of a "prison-industrial complex" - jails
and detention centers for profit - backed by financial contributions
from the "corrections" industry and workforce.
Why does the United States incarcerate proportionately
more of it's citizens than any other nation? Aside from the social-policy
debate and implications, it's costly to taxpayers - while generating
huge profits for the emerging corrections "industry"!
And this industry is greasing the palms of those who set policy,
to keep the gravy train rolling along.
A
report from the Montana-based Institute on Money in State Politics
reveals that during the 2002 and 2004 election cycles, private
prison companies, directors, executives and lobbyists gave $3.3
million to candidates and state political parties across 44 states.
To investors, it's profitable. The conservative-leaning
Heritage Foundation encourages privatization - emphasizing
the profitability, in an information article.
"Florida in 1981 became
the first state to contract out the entire state prison industry
to private management. Prison Rehabilitative Industries &
Diversified Enterprises Inc. (PRIDE), a firm based in Clearwater,
Florida, now manages all 53 Florida prison work programs as a
for profit operation. PRIDE made a $4 million profit last year.
Many states considering privatization of prison industries are
studying the PRIDE model."
Follow the money: Outcomes
we want?
Central Falls, R.I., built a jail - backed
by municipal bonds sold to investors seeking profit. But now local
taxpayers in this old mill town are on the hook. Townsfolk were
misled; promised jobs and new revenue to the city never really
materialized - but local residents saw their neighbors incarcerated
in immigration sweeps, blasting families apart as parents were
deported - and then a death.
The city was nearly bankrupt in 1990 when
developers made a proposition: Build a profit-making jail for
two or three hundred nonviolent federal detainees, and guarantee
a steady stream of money and jobs for Central Falls.
A budget approved later by the municipal corporation
even included $6,000 a month for a Washington lobbyist to seek
more detainees at higher rates.
When you follow the money, you realize this
was yet-another transfer of wealth from a poor town to wealthy
investors. And the result was social disruption on a massive scale
- and a shocking needless death in the detention center. This
story, so offensive to our values, should not be happening in
America.
Read
the full story - by Nina Bernstein, published December
26, 2008, in the New York Times.
Excerpts from Bernstein's story:
"In a sinking economy, immigration detention is a rare
growth industry. Congress has doubled annual spending on it
in the last four years, to $2.4 billion approved in October
as part of $5.9 billion allotted for immigration enforcement
through next September - even more than the Bush administration
had requested.
"Seeking a slice of that bounty, communities like Farmville,
Va., and Pahrump, Nev., are signing up with developers of new
detention centers. Jails from New England to New Mexico have
already made the crackdown pay off - for the private companies
that dominate the industry, for some investors and, at least
in theory, for places like Central Falls, a city so strapped
that the state pays for its schools.
"But the deal that emerged,
like many elsewhere, proved better at paying private investors
than generating public revenue. The municipal corporation borrowed
$30 million through a state bond issue to build the Wyatt Detention
Center, and hired the Cornell company to run it. Six years later,
the municipal body borrowed $38 million to refinance, buying back
most of the bonds at a premium that gave the original bondholders
a lump-sum return of 28.5 percent on their investment in addition
to 9 percent annual interest.
Are we witnessing the growth of a Prison-Industrial
Complex? Special-interest private profit should not be skewing
our public policy decisions.
This is why we need public financing of election
campaigns - and a return of morality to democracy in America.
~ Craig Salins
Salins is Executive
Director of Washington Public Campaigns, working for public financing
of campaigns at every level. washclean.org
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