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| Beware the Prison-Industrial Complex |
| By publicnewsservice.org - Doug Ramsey |
| Published: 02/16/2012 |
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PHOENIX - Arizona's private prisons are unneeded, unsafe and waste millions of taxpayer dollars, according to a new report from the Arizona branch of the American Friends Service Committee. The report cites a new 2,000-bed private prison contained in Gov. Jan Brewer's budget as an example of the waste. King Downing, AFSC national healing justice goal analyst, says political pressure from huge private-prison corporations is creating a "prison-industrial complex" in states such as Arizona. "In the military-industrial complex, over 50 percent of the budget is spent on military and not other items that we need in the government. In the prison-industrial complex, states are spending over half of their money on incarceration with a lot of it going toward these major corporations." Typical state contracts with private prison operators require that inmate occupancy rates be kept above 97 percent. Carolyn Isaacs, AFSC's Arizona program director, says the cost of such policies was revealed following a 2010 breakout at a private prison in northwest Arizona, after which some inmates were temporarily removed. "For example, after the Kingman escapes, DOC was trying to get those problems fixed. They weren't fixing the cameras and the security issues there. Essentially we paid $3 million for empty beds." Read More. |
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