Reply #291: Anti-ALEC / CCA Site: "Immigrants for Sale" exposing & taking ACTION against detension for PROFIT... [View All]

TOP 3 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT PRIVATE PRISONS
1) The victims: Private prisons don't care about who they lock up. At a rate of $200 per immigrant a night at their prisons, this is a money making scheme that destroys families and lives.

2) The players: CCA (Corrections Corporation of America), The Geo Group and Management and Training corporations - combined these private prisons currently profit more than $5 billion a year.

3) The money: These private prisons have spent over $20 million lobbying state legislators to make sure they get state anti-immigration laws approved and ensure access to more immigrant inmates.

Today, our friends at Brave New Foundation launched the 'Immigrants for Sale' campaign with a powerful animated video exposing the way private prisons profit off the passage of anti-immigrant legislation, and what that means for the democratic process.

The video is the first in an on-going series documenting the abuse, corruption and corporate influence that drives both the rush to privatize incarceration and the draconian sentencing and immigration laws that make the rush profitable.

The three largest corporate players in the industry -- CCA (the Corrections Corporation of America), The Geo Group and Management and Training corporations -- reap annual profits of more than $5 billion a year at the same time as they dole out more than $20 million annually in lobbying to (mostly rightwing) state legislators to ensure the approval of the regional anti-immigrant laws that fill their coffers.

An NPR report outlined how CCA and co. aim to translate the anti-immigrant rhetoric and political void into a long-lasting cash drive -- believing that illegal immigrants will continue to provide a fresh and highly profitable influx of new inmates to their cells if harsh anti-immigration legislation Arizona-style stays popular.
As Brave New Films' Alex Cabbellero writes at Huffington Post, "CCA founder Tomas Beasly once called his scheme 'more profitable' than selling burgers or cars -- a clear indication that any sense of justice in the prison industry will be forever trumped by cash flows and profit margins."

Community and labor groups are taking to the streets today in five major cities to demand divestment of private and public holdings in the private prison industry. Critics say that the prison industry is relying on taxpayers to fund its income by lobbying for harsher immigrant incarceration policies. Those anti-immigrant policies not only drive up prison populations but also put added strains on state and federal budgets. Taxpayers need a "prison break"-- some relief from the taxing chains that prisons put on public funding.
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The private prison industry, in league with major investors, is working to increase the criminalization of U.S. communities. Through lobbying efforts, they increase federal penalties and incarcerations. States like Arizona and Georgia also recently passed legislation that accelerates the detention of immigrants. This overpopulates local prisons. The video at the top of this post explains the process and the profit dynamic that drives it.

It’s hardly a secret that private prison corporations like Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO group, along with right-wing lobbying group ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) and a few pocketed state legislators like Russell Pearce in Arizona, have been at it–deliberately promoting and designing laws aimed at incarcerating immigrants and turning the prison system into an incredibly lucrative business.

The immigration debate needs a serious, integrated national and foreign policy plan–one the deals with the root of the issue. What it doesn’t need are the hands of businessmen looking to make another buck. What we get are ill-advised, constitutionally useless discriminatory laws like SB1070–laws that have caused more harm to the debate, the economy and the nation’s political discourse.

This model prioritizes profit ahead of brains. Money ahead of humanity. Greed in place of decency. It’s ‘immigration’ being put up for sale. We can no longer afford our apathy. The longer we wait to build coherent, legal solutions to the issue, the more abusive practices continue to prosper. It’s time to take a very close look at what private prisons are doing to our security, our social fabric and our Latino communities.

They are using us as scapegoats to fill the coffers–as pawns in the next Ponzi scheme. CCA, ALEC and their cronies are not in it to “fix” the immigration issue. Who are we kidding? They love it–the less immigrants to put behind bars, the less Latinos to incarcerate while waiting for proof of papers, the less individuals to get lost in the system–the less dollars deposited into their bank accounts. They don’t care about who is affected, who dies in their care, who faces persecution by the hateful laws they are peddling.

It’s all about the profit. They are making a killing, and you are paying for it.