On Thursday, Sept. 17, presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), along with three house democrats, introduced the Justice Not For Sale Act, which would ban the federal government and state and local jurisdictions from any further contracting with private prisons or immigration detention facilities. The Act, if passed into law, would also reinstate the federal parole system and make several changes to immigration detention law.
Unlike federal and state prisons, and local jails, private prisons are run as for-profit enterprises. They currently house more than 130,000 federal and state prisoners, along with tens of thousands of Marshals Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees. Cost to house prisoners in private prisons and detention centers is considerably higher than it is in public facilities, and dozens of private prisons are in the news every year for inhumane conditions ranging from lack of medical care to prisoner beatings and juvenile sexual abuse. Fort Worth Weekly has reported some of those conditions in several past stories, including a 2010 cover story, “Private Prisons, Public Pain” (https://www.fwweekly.com/2010/03/10/private-prisons-public-pain/.
In announcing the Act, Senator Sanders said that, “We cannot fix our criminal justice system if corporations are allowed to profit from mass incarceration.”
During the 30+ years of prison privatization, prison corporations have lobbied for harsher sentencing, elimination of parole, the ability to keep illegal immigrants with minor criminal infractions in jails and prisons for years prior to deportation, and a host of other rules which help keep those private prisons full. The vast majority of private prisons contracting with both the federal government and state and local jurisdictions also have bed minimums of more than 90 percent–meaning that even if beds are empty, the prison corporations get paid for them.
Signing onto the Act with Sen. Sanders were Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.). At the Act’s introduction, Grijalva said that, “By treating prisoners and detainees as a means to a profit margin, we’re incentivizing jailors to lobby for ever more inmates, and for inmates to be denied even the basic staples they’re entitled to.”
Unfortunately, the private prison industry is run by many formerly high ranking federal bureaucrats who continue to wield a great deal of influence, and so this Act is probably doomed to failure. In a just society, it would at least get a fair hearing.
Does anyone suspect that there’s any way, could it possibly be, do you imagine that in some fashion, maybe Repug greed-heads might have a stake in the private prison hell-holes? Whose side do you estimate our Texas politicians are supporting? Figure any Southern Baptist heros are making anything on this inhuman travesty? How many Tea-Bagging half-wits give a flip one way or another, in your estimation??? Do you figure that in some way God is encouraged by this despicable behavior to bless America and Texas and our black-hearted, greed-headed, Repug Tea-Bagging, half-wit citizens? Please, I truly ask for your opinion…thanks very kindly.
In calling for a “fair hearing” I think you’re saying that congressmen should publicly debate and vote on the bill. If that’s what you mean by “fair hearing” I think most citizens would agree with you. But that’s not how it works. Republicans demanded a vote on the recent Iran deal and didn’t get it, and I didn’t hear Democrats complain.
Jill H: I think the difference is that presidents along make deals with foreign countries–it’s in the constitution that way, unless it’s an official treaty, which the Iran deal is not–while when senators introduce Bills, they are to be looked at by other senators, as a means test. In this case, it would be “Fair” if hearings were held on Sanders’ bill, while it would be utterly illegal and unconstitutional for the senate or anyone else to weigh in on a “president-only” non-binding resolution with the head of a foreign government. But that’s a huge difference.
Jill H: I think the difference is that presidents alone make deals with foreign countries–it’s in the constitution that way, unless it’s an official treaty, which the Iran deal is not–while when senators introduce Bills, they are to be looked at by other senators, as a means test. In this case, it would be “Fair” if hearings were held on Sanders’ bill, while it would be utterly illegal and unconstitutional for the senate or anyone else to weigh in on a “president-only” non-binding resolution with the head of a foreign government. But that’s a huge difference.
@Pete. You take a legalistic approach to defend not having a vote on the Iran deal. Don’t you think there are legalistic grounds not to have a vote on Bernie’s bill? (E.g. bill didn’t make it out of committee).