Journalist goes undercover at a prison

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beneficii
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25 Jun 2016, 2:21 pm

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... ource=digg

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beneficii
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25 Jun 2016, 2:32 pm

The CCA, a company that runs private prisons in the U.S., sure likes their nationalist imagery:

Quote:

Beyond it there is a mural of a fighter jet dropping a bomb into a mountain lake, water blasting skyward, and a giant bald eagle soaring overhead, backgrounded by an American flag.

Quote:

On one wall is a mural of a prison nestled among dark mountains and shrouded in storm clouds, lightning striking the guard towers and an enormous, screeching bald eagle descending with a giant pair of handcuffs in its talons.

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LoveNotHate
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25 Jun 2016, 6:18 pm

My thoughts:

1. Tragic for trans woman "China":
- her father beat her at a young age
- 4 years in prison for prostitution
- raped and beaten
- head shaved then solitary confinement

2. A 25 year federal mandatory sentence for smoking pot near a school.

This does not seem to be true.

Federal "Drug Free Zones" appear to leave the penalty up to the state
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug-free_school_zone

However, the penalties are very severe in some states.

3. CCA receives $34 per day for an inmate

That seems low. Not clear in the article whether that is what CCA HQ sends them or what they receive from the state.

The article made it seem like CCA HQ was scrimping on the money, yet, later the article makes it sound like the state just won't pay much.

4. Cadet pay is $9/hr, and Officer pay is $12.50 per hour.

Ouch.

Can't expect to get the best, or expect much from them at that pay.

beneficii
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25 Jun 2016, 7:57 pm

The article corrects the guard's error regarding smoking marijuana near a school already:

Quote:

Getting busted with a joint near a school will typically land you about six years, not 25.

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beneficii
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25 Jun 2016, 10:37 pm

Wow, serious medical neglect and a high level of secrecy on the part of the company.

IMO, if any private prison company insists on secrecy in its operations, then it shouldn't get a contract. Any such company must consent to having their records relating to the operations of the prison be public.

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beneficii
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26 Jun 2016, 1:13 pm

Mother Jones goes into how non-disclosure agreements are becoming increasingly common in the corporate world, representing a great enlarging of the concept of trade secrets (emphases in original):

Quote:

But here's the other reason investigations like this one have grown so rare: litigation. When ABC News busted Food Lion for repackaging spoiled meat for sale back in 1992, a jury bought the company's line that the real offense had been the falsification of employment applications and the reporters' failure to fulfill their assigned duties—i.e., repackaging spoiled meat! The $5.5 million damage award was eventually knocked down to just two dollars, but it put a chill on this kind of muckraking for a generation, and during that time, corporate and official entities built an ever-tighter web of legal protections. Nondisclosure agreements—once mainly the provenance of people who work on Apple product launches and Beyoncé videos—are now seeping into jobs of all stripes, where they commingle with various other "non-disparagement" clauses and "employer protection statutes." Somewhere along the way, employers' legitimate interest in protecting hard-won trade secrets has turned into an all-purpose tool for shutting down public scrutiny—even when the organizations involved are more powerful than agencies of government.

Or when, for that matter, they replace the government.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... itors-note

In the face of all this, I'm glad to see Mother Jones has the guts to go through with this reporting. Thanks to this shroud of secrecy, things apparently had been getting pretty bad at CCA, and probably at other companies that substitute for government, franchising their monopoly on the use of lawful force.

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LoveNotHate
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26 Jun 2016, 1:50 pm

beneficii wrote:

The article corrects the guard's error regarding smoking marijuana near a school already:

Quote:

Getting busted with a joint near a school will typically land you about six years, not 25.

Thanks.

In disbelief, I stopped reading when I read the first statement, and did about twenty minutes of searching on federal drug laws.

I guess when I returned I did not continue from the same location.

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26 Jun 2016, 3:32 pm

Although Dostoevsky apparently never actually wrote the following...

"You can judge a society by the way it treats its prisoners"

... he probably would have after reading the article in the OP.

Oh, and I noticed this from the article in the OP;

In other words... The CCA has the single largest number of facilities (17) in the state of Texas:

This state of Texas:
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rick-perry-f ... prison-law
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/us/te ... -rape.html

... how reassuring...

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