While New Mexico’s landscape may make the state the Land of Enchantment, its rapidly growing rates of incarceration have been utterly disenchanting. What’s worse, New Mexico is at the top of the nation’s list for privatizing prisons; nearly one-half of the state’s prisons and jails are run by corporations. Supposedly, states turn to private companies to cope better with chronic overcrowding… return to article
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Reader Comments (2)Page 1 of 1 pagesBeyond any incestuous relationship between state governments and private prison companies, I think the article would have benefited from addressing other issues that can be measured almost as easily as money changing hands. For instance, the living conditions found in state v. private prisons, recidivism rates for convicts housed in each, rates of reported abuse of prisoners by correctional officers for each, rates of inmate abuse of each other, etc. Florida Corrections Secretary McDonough said he thinks “the state is better at running prisons”, but the reader is left with only that quote, with no indication of what he was referring to in practical terms.
Also, I have to disagree with the author that it’s “worse” for prisons to be privately run, relative to New Mexico’s high incarceration rates, which are merely said to be “disenchanting” without further elaboration. High incarceration rates are among the top factors driving the problem of prisons being unmanageable by states, and are one big source of the perceived need to privatize in the first place, over and above the issue of profit.
Perhaps another article can follow up along these lines if the agenda is to show that privately run prisons are inherently more objectionable than state-run facilities, since this one had a primary focus upon allegations of corrupt financial relationships.
Posted by Kuya on Sep 5, 2006 at 8:00 AM In many ways the private prison industry is at least more overt in their stance towards the oppression of people as a result of the prisoner trade. Whereby, in California you have the Prison Guards Union operating with a 22 million dollar annual budget, at least 3 full-time lobbyists, and a staff of 90 pushing tough on people (also known as “tough on crime”) legislation. You have the guards union supporting the victims rights movement with both budget and office accomodations. . . lots of people are making lots of money off the prisoner trade, CCA and the GEO group are simply more overt about their human trafficking.
Posted by dpstein on Sep 5, 2006 at 6:21 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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