Prison Industry Ties to Anti-Immigration Bills

[pampango]

Source: Washington Independent

The private detention industry stands to gain substantially from a growing immigrant detention system, so it’s no accident that a lobbying group partially funded by Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, which operates some of the country’s largest private detention facilities, has had a hand in crafting both Arizona’s harsh SB 1070 immigration law and, now, the copycat bills springing up across the country.

Ties between Arizona lawmakers and CCA are not news, but Think Progress has a good run down of the key points: SB 1070 was drafted with help from the American Legislative Exchange Council, which helps the private sector write legislation for states. CCA, which is slated to receive $74 million for immigration detention centers in the 2010 fiscal year, helps fund the group.

CCA also has close, direct ties with Arizona lawmakers. Gov. Jan Brewer’s deputy chief of staff formerly worked as a lobbyist for CCA — his wife still works as a lobbyist there — and Brewer’s campaign chairman runs a lobbying firm that represents the prison corporation.

Similar ties can be found between CCA and lawmakers in other states who have pushed for anti-immigration laws, such as Tennessee and Colorado. (Read the full rundown for the states here.) And CCA routinely gives money to state lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, that have direct connections to the detention business, as The Texas Independent reported last month.

Read more: http://washingtonindependent.com/97747/prison-industry-ties-to-anti-immigration-bills

[Wilms]

1. Prison Industrial Complex, anyone?

:shrug:

[Uncle Joe]

2. For profit prisons should be illegal, only catastrophe can come from tolerating their existence.

You may not care because you don't use drugs, or you're not a minority, but it won't stop there, the nation's laws will become increasingly draconian as the for profit prison industry gains power, wealth and influence along with the growth of their inmate population.

If money is made from the imprisonment of the people while lobbying, aka: legalized bribery of the Congress and state legislatures are also allowed, that creates an adverse dynamic that over the long term can only lead to hard fascism, as the American People; become prisoners of their own nation and 21st century version slaves to the for profit prison industry.

Thanks for the thread, pampango.

[JonLP24]

3. +1

This same company already lobbies Congress and other lawmakers for stiffer prison sentences. People here may support longer sentences but it just isn't right for a company to use money they make from a prison workforce to fight for longer sentences so they can have a larger workforce.

Private prisons have got to go.

[Uncle Joe]

4. The entire concept is immoral and no doubt this is one of the reasons, we lead the world

in the number of people behind bars; 2.3 million here in the "land of the free."

Imprisoning criminals should only be a state function.