Criminalizing Immigration is a Crime Against Humanity

Unless the ones doing the deporting are full-blooded Native Americans.

 

Criminalizing immigration has two purposes:  expanding White Supremacy and enriching the private prison industry.

So easy to round up brown citizens with the non-citizens, and even easier to falsely accuse all of them of crimes since they're deported or imprisoned without trial.

From The Nation:

The people Trump says he will target—those “bringing drugs,” “bringing crime,” who are “rapists,” as he put it in the speech that launched his campaign—sound terribly scary. The idea that there are millions of them is quickly seeping into our political discourse as though it were fact. In reality, any effort to deport 3 million “criminal” immigrants will first require branding law-abiding people as 
criminals—a process that’s been unfolding across presidential administrations stretching back to Bill Clinton’s, but that Trump plans to escalate massively.

SNIP

All told, Trump’s agenda will likely spur a massive
 expansion of the federal prison system. The ACLU estimates that Kate’s Law alone could require the Bureau of Prisons to open nine new facilities. The morning after the election, stock prices soared for two of the country’s largest private-prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America (which recently changed its name to CoreCivic) and the GEO Group. These companies manage both the prisons and the civil-detention facilities where the majority of immigrants are held. In March, Trump told a crowd at a town hall, “I do think we can do a lot of privatizations, and private prisons—it seems to work a lot better.”

Lie number 70 zillion.  Private prisons are so corrupt and overpriced that ...

In August, after the release of a critical report by the DOJ’s inspector general, the Justice Department ordered the Bureau of Prisons to begin closing down all of its private facilities. That process will now likely come to a screeching halt.

SNIP

Sima Atri, an attorney with the Congress of Day Laborers who represents Diaz-Castro, argues that a single misdemeanor conviction for illegal entry shouldn’t turn her client into a deportable criminal under the current guidelines. “We argue, basically, that nothing has changed from before he was picked up by ICE and today,” Atri says. “He’s still a father who has lived here for years, and who has never been convicted of a crime.”

Feds Finally Admit: Privatization is the WORST

This decision addresses only privately-run federal prisons, but the issue is of course far, far bigger.  The problem with private prisons is not the prison part, it's the private part.

Giving tax dollars to for-profit companies to provide public services is worse that a mere horrific  waste of money and an even more horrific abuse of helpless citizens.  It's worse than incompetent, worse than counter-productive, worse than sabotaging the very idea of public services provided by public employees at public expense.

Privatization - which in most cases is invisible to the public - gives people the precisely wrong idea that government does not work and should be run like a business.

It's private companies making a profit off of the Common Wealth that always fails.

Washington Post:

The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons after officials concluded the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced the decision on Thursday in a memo that instructs officials to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or “substantially reduce” the contracts’ scope. The goal, Yates wrote, is “reducing — and ultimately ending — our use of privately operated prisons.”

“They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department’s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security,” Yates wrote…

The Justice Department’s inspector general last week released a critical report concluding that privately operated facilities incurred more safety and security incidents than those run by the federal Bureau of Prisons. The private facilities, for example, had higher rates of assaults — both by inmates on other inmates and by inmates on staff — and had eight times as many contraband cellphones confiscated each year on average, according to the report.

TPM took a deep look at private prisons here as part of a series on privatized government in general. 

And that's where this prison story needs to lead: the millions of government contracts worth tens of billions of tax dollars given to private companies to do everything from janitorial work to running schools to nursing patients to undermining public safety as cops and firefighters.

Only government can provide public services, because only government is accountable to the public.

Now that we have proof that private contracts always cost more than public employees and always fail to provide adequate services, it's time to put an end to companies sucking off the taxpayer tit.

KY Prison Contractor Serves Rat-Eaten Cake in Michigan

Anybody doubt that Aramark is doing this and worse here?  Anybody think inmate riots are not an appropriate response? Anybody want to try to defend privatization?

Think Progress:

Rodent saliva is on the dessert menu in Michigan’s prisons thanks to Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) decision to hand over prison food service to Aramark, one of the largest private prison food vendors in the country.

In July, 2014, an Aramark employee discovered an inmate who worked in the kitchen throwing the rodent-marred cakes into the trash. The Aramark worker instructed the inmate to stop tossing the desserts and start slicing off the parts that had visibly been “eaten or pawed at” and adding frosting to cover the cuts. “The Aramark employee allegedly ordered him to cut the sides of the cake off and serve it to the population,” reads one of the July 20, 2014 emails unearthed by a Freedom of Information Act request from the liberal group Progress Michigan. No illnesses resulted from the incident, the state spokesman told the site. In subsequent emails, staff ordered a full cleaning of the kitchen in question and sought a pest control crew.

Aramark, a food service vendor conglomerate that has described its prison contracts as a primary driver of company growth in previous correspondence with shareholders, fired the worker who had ordered the cake served on the following day, according to the emails.

The incident might like an isolated screwup by one reckless individual, but Aramark has earned a reputation for putting the company’s bottom line ahead of prisoners’ well-being in both Michigan and other states. Aramark once served rotten-smelling meatballs that had thawed in a broken freezer, though the company maintains they were not rotten. More than a hundred inmates at another Michigan prison were quarantined with a serious digestive bug that Michigan Department of Corrections officials said was probably linked to food. In Ohio last August, 1,000 incarcerated women threw their lunch trays out in protest after maggots were found on Aramark’s food serving line. The company’s operations have been accused of underfeeding inmates and been linked to prison unrest, including a 2009 riot in a Kentucky facility.

 And nibbling rats are just the tip of the disgusting iceberg, you can be sure. 

Company With KY Contracts Still Serving Maggoty Meals

Aramark's criminally bad food service has been accused of causing riots in Kentucky prisons; how many people does it have to kill and how many millions of KY taxpayer dollars does it have to steal before we finally outlaw privatization?

Carimah Townes at Think Progress:

A prison food vendor that underfeeds inmates and prepares food next to maggots could have its contract extended in Ohio.

Several lawsuits allege that Aramark Correctional Services, a Philadelphia-based company, violates prisoner rights by failing to provide enough food and preparing food in unsanitary conditions. On multiple occasions, maggots were spotted in Ohio prison kitchens. Facilities reportedly ran out of main courses, and inmates were fed white bread and peanut butter instead. Employee absenteeism was also cited as a major problem in the past, while many workers had illegal sexual encounters with inmates. Collectively, Aramark’s contract violations forced the state to fine the company $272,000, although its endemic service failures extend to other parts of the country as well.

State Closes Last Private Prison

For all the shit Kentucky gets wrong - coughprescriptionsdrugscough - every once in a while the Commonwealth shows the nation how modern, progressive government is done.

From now on, the confinement, care and safety of every prisoner will be the direct responsibility of state employees and elected officials, whom the public can hold directly accountable.

That's the only way to make anything work in a democracy.

Oh, and save a shitload of money in the process.

From the press release 

Justice and Public Safety Secretary J. Michael Brown today announced that the Kentucky Department of Corrections would not enter into a new contractual agreement with a private prison in Marion County when the current contract expires on Sunday.

The decision means that for the first time in nearly 30 years, Kentucky would have no inmates housed in private prisons.

“Through the collaborative efforts of administration officials, legislative leaders, and local communities, we have made real, sustained progress in reducing the number of inmates while better preparing those who are incarcerated to re-enter society,” Sec. Brown said.  “This has created, for the first time in a generation, an opportunity to manage our inmate population with existing DOC facilities, county jails, and local halfway houses.”

Secretary Brown credited the bold policy changes contained in House Bill 463 from the 2011 legislative session with much of the progress in Kentucky’s criminal justice system.  The law modernized Kentucky drug laws and reinvested a portion of the savings from reduced prison costs into drug treatment opportunities for offenders who need help.

The department has up to 120 days to move all inmates from Marion Adjustment Center (MAC) once its current contract expires.  However, the exact transition schedule will be worked out between DOC and MAC’s parent company, Corrections Corporation of America.

MAC currently houses 794 inmates, including 232 non-secure custody inmates and 562 secure custody inmates. The department is preparing a transition plan to ensure that all inmates currently enrolled in a Substance Abuse Program (SAP) will either have completed the program prior to leaving MAC, or will be placed in a SAP elsewhere to ensure their treatment is uninterrupted. 

This opportunity to ensure continued treatment is available through the recent expansion of SAP beds in the department’s facilities, local jails, and through community mental health center contracts that offer more flexibility in providing treatment.

“One of the major considerations in making this decision was whether we could continue to meet the treatment needs of inmates struggling with substance abuse issues, and that has been assured,” Brown said.

CCA will determine the next course of action for its facility and employees.  If needed, employees of the private company will be assisted by a rapid response team from the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet and by the Personnel Cabinet in the application process for those seeking potential employment in state government.

It is estimated that inmates housed at MAC can be moved to other facilities available to DOC and county jails at an estimated savings of $1.5 to $2.5 million per year.

“The Department of Corrections continually reassesses its bed space needs, and this decision is further evidence of the department’s responsible and efficient use of state resources, as well as an indication that the reforms we’ve enacted over the past several years are working,” Brown said.

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The Price of Privatization

Higher costs, less service, worse results: why would any local, state or federal government choose to turn public services over to a private company when it always means the taxpayers get screwed?

Because providing good service to taxpayers is not as important as lining the pockets of campaign-contributing corporations.

The real genius of giant corporate criminal CCA is that it takes the one public service which state governments perform worse than any other ... and do it even worse.

karoli at Crooks and Liars:

The ACLU has a deeply disturbing report about deteriorating conditions in Ohio prisons after Corrections Corporation of America took over.

This is what privatization looks like:

CCA took control of Lake Erie Correctional Facility on January 1, 2012, and the problems started almost immediately. Officials in Conneaut, Ohio – where the prison is located – were surprised to learn they may be on the hook for policing the facility because state law prohibited the highway patrol from so investigating crimes in this no-longer-state-owned building.

Conneaut taxpayers were not keen on CCA and the state passing the financial burden onto them, and despite the community successfully lobbying the state to change this law last year, Conneaut is still saddled with increased responsibility for policing Lake Erie.

Unfortunately, this is not where the problems end.

In September 2012, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC) released its first internal audit report. If this was CCA's first report card, let's just say they would need to repeat the semester. The compliance rating plummeted from the 97.3% compliance rating the prison achieved when publicly-owned to 66.7%. Auditors found outrageous violations like prisoners being forced to use plastic bags for defecation and cups for urination because they had no running water for toilets. Basic conditions were heinous, with black mold, standing water, and spoiled food found throughout the prison. Perhaps even more troubling were reports that the medical department is grossly understaffed and many prisoners go untreated.

CCA is a very, very large contributor to Republicans, particularly the Republican Governors' Association. In 2012, it contributed $225,000 to the RGA, because Republican governors like to give them business. In 2010, the year Kasich was elected, their own report shows that corporate contributions were $722,200. Of course, they were able to bury these in the state-by-state breakdown they published following the totals, because the RGA is a national committee and doesn't break down by state.

This is what happens when public duties are handed off to for-profit corporations. According to CCA's most recent quarterly report, their contract for the Ohio facility is an initial twenty-year term with unlimited options to renew.

As the ACLU report warns, if the CCA wants to manage prisons in your state, just shout NO, over and over and over. Also, it might be good not to elect Republican governors.

When your governor and state legislators start babbling about "saving money" by firing public employees and contracting with a private company,  think about having to shit in plastic bags because there's no water.