http://eecoswitch.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-user-extra-fields/js/wpuef-configurator.js It’s fabulous riding from state to state and getting some of the local news. Ohio’s Republican governor has begun implementing a plan to privatize some of the state’s prisons. America’s prisons are a national disgrace, a waste of human life and an outrage against human dignity. But privatizing them sounds like a transparently terrible idea. Why? Well, I was just riding through Pennsylvania, and here’s what you get from their private prisons – a judge who takes bribes from private corrections companies in order to send more juveniles to jail.
order gabapentin for dogs A Pennsylvania juvenile court judge was sentenced Thursday to 28 years in prison for accepting some $1 million in bribes from a builder of two juvenile detention centers.
Judge Mark Ciavarella, Jr., 61, was convicted earlier of racketeering in a scheme where he sent juveniles as young as 10 to the detention facilities.
Look to be reading this about Ohio judges in a few years. The problem is obvious: if prisons are corporations, there are incentives for corporate executives to find a way to get more people in prison. The cheapest way to do this is to bribe a judge – he’s just one person, and he has fairly wide power to send people to prison. And sure enough, that’s what has happened in Pennsylvania.
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[…] One of the curious buildings in town was an old jail, adjacent to the courthouse. I took a photo of the odd sign on its side, “IT IS UNLAWFUL TO COMMUNICATE WITH PRISONERS WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE SHERIFF’S OFFICE.” The building was in fine shape but did not appear to be used anymore. Its modest dimensions – about the size of a three-bedroom house – obviously cannot satisfy the needs of the modern military-industrial complex. Though Kingman appears to be the kind of place where no one lives, Mojave County just scrapped the old jail’s successor, a 47,000-square-foot facility which has held nearly 500 inmates at times, though supposedly it holds only about 200 comfortably. The new jail, opened in 2010, boasts 266,000 square feet. Possible uses for the old jail, according to the Kingman Daily Miner, include “a transfer station for private prison corporations.” […]
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