Few protesting Private Prisons are saying “Be Nice to the Bad Guys.” Or advocating “Get Soft on Crime. It is just that in a State which ranks at the bottom for spending on education and at the top on spending for incarcerating prisoners, it doesn’t make sense to spend $150,000 for housing a guy for seven years who sold some pot on the street, or $35,000 for a guy who wanted a job washing dishes in the US.
It doesn’t make any sense … unless your company makes money on filling prison beds.
More than 130 people packed the Public Hearing at Pima Community College’s Downtown Campus last night for the first ever hearings on prison privatization in Arizona.
The protest against prisons which are operated by corporations who have a clear profit motive in keeping beds filled and overhead costs low is about money.
Profit motive to incarcerate. Profit motive to detain people longer. Profit motive to save on staff salaries, training, benefits.
The for-profit business model being used to build and manage prisons has been increasingly in the news – especially in Arizona, where 3 murderers escaped from a Kingman prison operated by Management and Training Corporation and killed 2 people in Oklahoma in August. The article outlining the gross mismanagement of the prison was published by Arizona Central. They are increasingly facing charges that they bring more problems than solutions to the communities which house them and the State which supports them.
Within the last week, the first of several public hearings on the issue of prison privatization, was held in Tucson to a packed crowd. It included a host of speakers both local and national including, Stephen Nathan, the Editor of Prison Privatisation Report International from London, England who started the evening off with his expert testimony on the failure of private prisons throughout the world.
The fight in the State over Private Prisons is happening in Sahuarita, Arizona where the opposition on the Tohono O’odham Nation reservation may be successful in stopping a new prison to house immigrant women and children, involving the same folks who proposed the Globe project (James Parkey & Chris Cuny), and in Benson, where the City Manager has said No Thanks.
The protest over a proposed private prison in Globe is just one of many in the State as citizens become more aware of the problems associated with these facilities.
NPR recently completed a two-part broadcast which specifically links those who designed Arizona’s SB1070 law to the economics of private prisons in this State. Forget for a moment whether you agree or don’t agree with SB1070, and just consider this.
The companies who were involved in the drafting of the legislation consider “Immigration enforcement” as their next big “market.” That doesn’t sound like we are trying to fix the growing problem of incarcerating people in this State. It sounds like some elected leaders in Arizona just created a new growth industry for their “favorite sons.”
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