The Department of Justice will stop contracting with private prisons, the department announced Thursday morning. The decision comes a week after the DOJ inspector general released a damning report on the safety, security, and oversight of private prisons, which incarcerate 12 percent of federal inmates.
Now if we could just end the drug “war” and demilitarize the police…
Am I missing something or does this only affect federal prisons and therefore only a minority of the prison population?
Seems like you USAians still gotta long way to go..
=8)-DX
Some good news once in a while.
Private prisons are nothing but abuse and corruption.
@#1 My thoughts exactly. If I understand this correctly, then especially Republican-led states will continue to use private prisons because of their ideology. But it’s a first step, I suppose.
A negligible fraction of the prison population, you could almost say. But still, it’s a good first step.
It is indeed a good step, though limited to Federal prisons. Perhaps the Fed’s rationale can be useful in litigation against private prisons for states.
As I recall, though, not all private prisons are horrible and abusive. There are some for upscale, white-collar offenders. Some of the Watergate felons ended up in these facilities.
According to the Font of All Knowledge, the US isn’t the only place with private prisons: the UK and Australia have them. Canada also had a couple, but they have revert to government control.
This is good news, qualified by the point that this still means the states can still have privately run prisons. As y’all know being ‘tough on crime’ in the strongly red states means there will be little appetite for changing that. Still, it is a bang on the door, and I choose to hope the door opens.
Rule of thumb. The Government can do anything private industry can at least 10-15% cheaper. Government doesn’t have to pay profits, dividends, taxes, and exorbitant executive salaries.
Aw, poor prison businesses: Prison stocks plunge after report Justice Department will end use of private prisons. Perhaps investors see the Fed pulling out as prelude to the states following suite.
While this is good news, and is a step in the right direction, it does not remove private prisons from all federal government prison-related activities. The handling of immigrants is an excerption:
Think Progress link
Perhaps it’s best to wait to see how lobbying will shake out first. I image there have been a lot of furious phone calls made today.
Found a very handy graphic with numbers from 2015: http://static.prisonpolicy.org/images/lockedup_pie.jpg?v=6
This puts the federal prison population at about 15% of the total ~prison~ population, or closer to 10% if you count all forms of incarceration.
Per the ACLU ( https://www.aclu.org/issues/mass-incarceration/privatization-criminal-justice/private-prisons ), at this point federal prisons have about 16% of their population in private prisons, while that number is closer to 6% nationwide for the states.
Running those numbers, I get about 82,000 private-prison held state prisoners, vs. about 13,000 federal prisoners in private prisons. So, about 15-16% of the total private-prison population is affected by this ruling–and you know what? That’s actually a pretty damn good first start. It also puts the DOJ in a position to better chastise state private prisons for unconstitutionally poor conditions.
Theoretically, Obama is calling the shots for the next 5 months, but he is one smart person. I just wonder if a phone call was made prior to the announcement to the Clinton Campaign.
I have seen reports that Clinton is being pressured to keep Merrick Garland’s nomination alive if elected, and he is on her short list, making it seem plausible.
Coordination in policies at this point in time seems a possibility.
Now if we could just end the drug “war”
It’s going to have to happen, as prison-space drops over the next 5 years.
Of course if Trump wins, the prisons may get Yuge.
They can scrap the three strikes law as well.
Here’s Bernie Sanders’ response to the DOJ announcement:
@12 Troll:
Well. Nice to know that the: “What about the Supreme Court appointments?” argument for voting Clinton is complete and total bullshit.
I’m still waiting for the reasons to vote for the non-viable Stein, who is an abject newager (rhymes with sewager, and is what newage fuckwittery is).
JH, why you YOU still trolling for your failed candidate? You won’t show viability (electability by the general populace). The polling data has Stein 2-4%. Totally ignorable as a candidate….Your blather speaks loser, not somebody who has something to say.
Dang, left off the link in #18
Hillary Clinton
Glad to see that the Justice Department is ending the use of private prisons. This is the right step forward. -H
I haven’t seen Donald Trump’s response yet.
@ #16
Seriously? Because a few Senators suggest that Clinton re-nominate Garland, that makes the Supreme Court argument for voting for Clinton “complete and total bullshit”? Logic is not your strong suit, is it?
I posted Bernie Sanders’ response to the DOJ decision upthread. He is still an important voice in the US Senate and is launching Our Revolution on August 24th.
An excerpt from an email I received today:
During our campaign we assembled a movement of millions of people ready to fight for the country we know we can become. Election days come and go, but the struggle for economic, social, racial and environmental justice must continue. We have the guts and the energy to take on the special interests, win critical battles on the most important issues of our time, and redefine what’s possible in this country. Now it’s time for all of us to get to work. Please be part of our new organization, Our Revolution.
On August 24 at 9pm ET / 6pm PT, I will address our national network of volunteers live at more than 2,000 organizing meetings across the country. Please attend one of those meetings in your area so you can get involved in the next steps for Our Revolution.
Lipidoptera #22, please keep the Horde/Ilk and/or PZ informed of any announcements. Thank you.
@17, 18 Troll:
Well gee, she’s anti-war, she supports clean energy and addressing global warming, she supports raising the minimum wage, she supports universal health care, she supports ending the stranglehold the 1% have on the economy, she supports a right to universal education, she supports demilitarizing the police, she supports ending mass surveillance, she supports protecting whistleblowers rather than persecuting them, she supports an end to the War On Drugs, and she opposes torture, concentration camps, and all the worst abuses of the War On Brown Terrorists.
Clinton opposes all those things.
But Stein also supports a bit of newage bullshit, so you’ll vote for Clinton and then accuse me of demanding “ideological purity” with absolutely no awareness of the irony.
Your fallacy is: One Single Proof. I can demonstrate that Stein’s positions would be more desirable to a majority of Americans; I can demonstrate that a substantial majority of Americans would, in isolation and without reference to party or candidate names, choose Stein’s vision of America over that of Trump, Clinton, or Johnson. I can demonstrate that support for Clinton is highly suggestive of an Abilene problem in which a majority large enough to decide the election all decides that while they prefer Stein, they will “strategically” vote for Clinton in the name of an imaginary consensus. I can demonstrate that fairly standard campaign tactics – of the sort large numbers of people who don’t actually support Clinton are using on her behalf – could easily be used in support of Stein. And I can demonstrate that should these standard campaign tactics be used on Stein’s behalf, she has a decent shot at winning.
And you will ignore all of the above.
Because in your little world, if Stein can’t win an election effortlessly, then she is inherently unable to win at all. I might as well add false dichotomy to your fallacies list.
As some people pointed out this only accounts for a small fraction of prisons. It also doesn’t end private contractors as gaurds and other prison officials. Nor outsourcing things like food and clothing which provide incentives for incarceration.
@24, No, she can’t win it at all. At least not through any of her own actions. To make a green party presidential candidate viable one of the two major parties which is more closely aligned would have to basically implode. Also the fact that the greens have no support in basically any level of government, state or higher, wouldn’t change this. Not to mention that this year the moment people actually started paying attention to the Green party the more they thought they were crazy. (Also, according to Chris Clarke, PZ’s former coblogger, they’re not really that environmentally conscious.) Personally, I considered her just an idealist until her Brexit comments, which are when I realized she just had no idea about how the world worked at all.
@24 Additionally presidents don’t legislate. Her actual positions aren’t actually as relevant as you seem to think. Also, shouting the name of a logical fallacy isn’t a fucking argument.
She’s also polling 2-4%. Where the fuck is your conclusive evidence she is polling in 25% plus necessary to considered viable.
You lie and bullshit every time you avoid the polling evidence. You are the TROLL, not me.
Show me the evidence that Stein is electable, or shut the fuck up.
Why you consider her a candidate is utterly and totally dismissed.
Show my why the general populace finds her an electable candidate, or shut the fuck up.
Jake @24. Right on, man. Jill is chill. She’s for the same things you and I are for.
Just one problem, baby. She’s got no chops. Dig?
For attitude I’d give her about an 84. For contacts in the whirling world of intrigue that is our government and that translate into the muscle needed to effect substantive change, I give her about a 2.
I know where you’re comin’ from, man. And that’s heavy. I mean, that’s really talkin’ about it. But shit, baby, that’s all it is.
Like, if you are going to sell ice cream cones you have to already make ice cream. And cones. Can you dig that, man?
The concept of ‘electability’ is the scourge of politics. If people voted purely on the basis of policy and forgot about that idiocy, would she still be polling at 2-4%? Of course not. But because people have accepted the prevailing ‘wisdom’ that a candidate must be either R or D, we see an continuous cycle of settling for the middle and progressing at a glacial pace.
#29
Laying the contrivance on a bit thick.
Trying to steer the topic back to the original post:
Anyone else think it’s odd that after Orange is the New Black showed America just how bad these for profit prisons are, that now the DOJ finally decides to do something about it?
Coincidence?
#30 Agreed, and I had to go back in time to pull it off. In my defense, the dude needed it.
Back on topic: back in the eighties my home state of Wyoming began farming out prisoners to Colorado. Too many methheads and meatheads and thumpers of others. At first it seemed justified. Serious ne’re do wells got comeuppance out of state for a reasonable daily rate and room was made in state for dope smokers and shoplifters.
Then Colorado ran short of cells. Presto! Private prisons popped up. Not immediately thereafter but pretty soon, reports of poor conditions began to surface. Some people felt a sense of concern that was not reflected in the state legislature.
Now this. I had a suspicion that private, for profit prisons would be a colossal fail and it is sad that it has taken this long for our ‘cough’ representatives to admit it.
Now that the feds are admitting it, the time has come to put pressure on state lawmakers and erase this pathetic scourge at all levels.
The purpose of prison is not primarily punishment, however vehement your opinion of certain criminals. At least in this country prison was once imagined as a means for miscreants to not only satisfy their debt to the community at large but to learn how not to do bad shit again.
Society has an obligation to provide prisoners with the tools and the knowledge and the confidence to rejoin their homes and towns and do well. To do well.
Why don’t we hold our lawmakers to these ideals?
Actually®, if We® still had Mollies®
#29 would get my vote.
dude
But, but, but…private companies are always better than state run facilities and organisations, aren´t they? Don´t tell me Ayn Rand was wrong! Next thing you tell me is that “Atlas Shrugged” was just a rubbish story and that libertarians are only nutters!
Can the owner of a jail be sent to his jail ?
@26, 27 sugarfrosted:
Yes, I think I already mentioned that she can’t win singlehandedly. First, it would require the multitudes of people who oppose Clinton’s policies to stop campaigning for Clinton and start campaigning for the candidate they’d prefer.
But no. You and the Troll would rather cling to the circular argument that we shouldn’t support Stein because she can’t win because we won’t support her because she can’t win.
Gee, you think?
There’s still a few things she’d be able to do unilaterally, like, erm, maybe pardon Snowden and Manning? You know, those things the so-called “progressive” Obama could do just as easily?
On the contrary. You think that the only reason to get someone elected is so they can legislate?
Stein winning the presidency would be a massive blow to the idea that the Democratic Party can simply take liberal votes for granted. Right now, the Democratic Party is actively working to suppress liberal candidates nationwide, often by intervening in primaries to support life-long Republicans who have only just changed their party registration. Ending the prevailing wisdom that liberals don’t count because they’ll vote Democratic no matter what will make it easier to elect progressive legislators in 2018 and beyond, and the easiest way to do that is to vote Stein.
After all, what do we have to lose? As you said, Presidents don’t legislate and have little real power, so if we succeed and elect Stein, she won’t be able to get any of her crazier positions passed, and if we fail so horribly that Trump gets elected, he won’t be able to get any of his crazy positions passed either.
No, but the three paragraphs underneath it are.
@28 Troll:
Hold up. Some many threads ago, you defined “viable” as polling at 45% or above. But then polls revealed that no one met that threshold, so suddenly you changed the number?
The problem is that your argument is fundamentally circular. You define “viable” as “either Clinton or Trump.” So when you say Stein isn’t “viable,” you really mean: “Stein is neither Clinton nor Trump, therefore I assume on faith that she can’t win.”
@29 Crudely Wrott:
Sorry, I don’t speak Jive.
@30 Holms:
THANK YOU.
Unfortunately, no election system can ever be made robust against people voting for candidates they know they oppose and then acting surprised when policies they oppose are enacted.
The removal of federal prison contracts is an important step. Heck: Putting people in prison for profit. What could go wrong?
May I draw attention to the fact that most prisoners are unable to vote (Two states permit). This suppression harms all voters. More than a million votes. If a politician can put you in jail you can’t vote against him. This is an important fact. I think it could be corrected by a federal regulation.
17- Stein sounds good. Listen to her town hall event (rt.com). If the 64 million students will vote for her she will win.
22, 23, 24 – Hear hear.
28- This argument about elect-ability is poor. In the polls Bernie looked pretty bad. The democrats had a hard fight to keep Bernie’s voters suppressed. Otherwise he would have won.
Incidentally, those suppressed voters are not happy campers and there’s a lot of them. What will they do in the election? Stay home? Make a brexit vote?
36- I don’t speak jive either.
Not only have the Feds been using private prisons, they’ve been contracting with state and county jails. My daughter is a corrections officer at a county jail & she tells us that they have Latin Kings inmates on Federal convictions sentenced to long terms at the jail. County jails are intended for shorter term incarcerations. These gang members are housed along with OWI, petty theft, drug and child-support offenders.
@damien75 #35:
You mean, can he profit from his own incarceration? Well, there’s one way to find out…
@37
Oh great, the “democrats suppressed Sanders voters” bullshit again. Do you actually have valid evidence that they did? Otherwise stay on topic. Jill Stein is an incompetent fail politician. If Bernie was on the green ticket then maybe I’d care about the green party, but currently they are next to useless.
https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2016/04/22/the-dnc-didnt-screw-bernie-the-voters-did/#more-2769
https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2013/10/13/why-a-third-party-wont-solve-anything/#more-1234
The point is to prevent Trump from getting elected by not splitting the voter base. That’s not a circular argument. Unless you can show that voting for a third party would somehow prevent the disaster that would be Trump, then you have no leg to stand on.
@40 logicalcat:
If you think the Presidential primary was the only one they’ve intervened in, then you really haven’t been paying attention.
That’s where we disagree. I believe the point should be to advance liberal policies, not merely to prevent Trump from getting elected by any means, even if it requires putting the right wing in charge for the next eight years.
If you believe Trump’s election would be so disastrous that you’re willing to support atrocities to prevent it, then by all means do so. Just don’t lie about it— when someone mentions, say, the war in Syria, just admit that as horrible as it is, you consider it tolerable (or even necessary) to serve the greater good of defeating Trump. If, say, news is released of a drone strike killing 70 children, just admit that while you may not like seeing that, their deaths were tolerable (or necessary) to achieve the greater good of Trump not being in the White House.
If you feel the need to lie about your own beliefs, then maybe you should rethink them.
“Redacted Tonight” says it all much better than I could (rt.com) (The stolen primary episode).
Yea, Lee Camp yelling is not evidence.
Preventing Trump is primary. YOUR radical agenda is secondary in my opinion, which negates yours. Get it?
@41 Jake Harban.
How about you show me with evidence that I lie about my beliefs? Maybe you are confusing me with someone else, because I’ve barely ever posted in these comment sections enough for you to even think any of that shit about me. I haven’t lied yet, so maybe you should take your own advice and rethink all of that shit you wrote.
No more for-profit prisons means no more private corporations (legally people) controlling citizens and compelling them to work for little to no pay. 100 years ago this was called by another name : “Slavery”.
So good riddance to a thing that should never have come to pass to begin with. Now, if we could just get the several states to do away with private prisons also.
@43 I think there are references for all his remarks. John Oliver too. You might disagree with them?