Prison Industrial Complex: Maximum Security Prison for Traffic Fines Costing Taxpayers 65,000 per yr

[Ghost of Huey Long]

Prison Industrial Complex: Traffic Fines Leave Wisconsin Citizens in Maximum Security Prison Costing Taxpayers $65,000 per year

The first inmate I talked to was delighted to be talking to anyone in a position of authority. I asked why he was in Super Max and he explained that he lost his driver’s license in Brown County, and was given a fine to pay. He continued driving even though his driving privileges were suspended.

“O.K. I said, how did you get to Super-Max?” He responded that he had been arrested again for operating a vehicle without a license. OK, why Super Max? He had sex with a guard in Green Bay. I immediately assumed rape or abuse of some kind. I asked and he said, “No, sex was consensual.” Why were you sent here? “They said I was a threat to society.” And, he added, “If I am a threat to society, there are a hell of a lot of threats to society out there.”

What happened to the guard? “She was put on leave for a month,” he said. So, here is a man, convicted of driving without a driver’s license sitting in a Super Max cell at a cost to the taxpayers of about $65,000 per year! Does this make sense? No, but read on.

http://www.fightingbob.com/weblog.cfm?postID=4434

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Ghost of Huey Long.

[Ghost of Huey Long]

3. no problem

California is 10 billion in debt, spends 11 Billion on prisons every year...

[rhett o rick]

2. k&r

[Ghost of Huey Long]

4. thanks!

I wonder....How many of these are run by Halliburton, or a subsidiary?

[BrendaBrick]

10. Here's some info from wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison

<snip>

Private prisons in the United States today:

Private companies in the United States operate 264 correctional facilities, housing almost 99,000 adult convicts. Companies operating such facilities include the Corrections Corporation of America, the GEO Group, Inc, and Community Education Centers. The GEO Group was formerly known as Wackenhut Securities.

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has a capacity of more than 80,000 beds in 65 correctional facilities. The GEO Group operates 61 facilities with a capacity of 49,000 offender beds,

Most privately run facilities are located in the southern and western portions of the United States and include both state and federal offenders.

another <snip>: Under "Attempts to limit privatization and increase oversight" heading:

Banning speculative private prison construction—For-profit prison companies have built new prisons before they were awarded privatization contracts in order to lure state contract approval. In 2001, Wisconsin’s joint budget committee recommended language to ban all future speculative prison construction in the state. Such anticipatory building dates back to at least 1997, when Corrections Corporation of America built a 2,000-bed facility in California at a cost of $80–100 million with no contract from the California Department of Corrections; a CCA official was quoted as saying, "If we build it, they will come".[36]

Edited to add this, FYI: (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison-industrial_complex )

Prison Abolition

A response to the Prison-Industrial Complex is the Prison abolition movement, which challenges the social problems that fuel the need for prisons and punishment. The goal of prison abolitionist is to end the Prison-Industrial Complex by shifting focus to the building of safe and healthy communities. Prison abolitionist aim to do this by changing the socioeconomic conditions of the communities that are affected the most by the Prison-Industrial Complex, and by supporting the funding of social programs that will help lower the rate of crimes, and therefore lower eventually end the need for policing and prisons. The movement gained momentum in 1997, when a group of prison abolition activist, scholars, and former prisoners collaborated to organized a three-day conference to examine the Prison-Industrial Complex in the U.S. The conference, Critical Resistance to the Prison-Industrial Complex, was held on September 1998 at the University of California, Berkeley and was attended by over 3,500 people of diverse academic, socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. Two years after the conference a political grassroots organization was founded bearing the same name with the mission to challenge and dismantle the Prison-Industrial Complex.[32] The Organization's national office is based in Oakland, California, with chapters in Oakland, California, Los Angeles, California, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Houston, Texas.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

5. Ed Garvey didn't mention whether he made an effort to verify what was said.

Does Garvey have a reputation for providing reliable information?

How do we know that the inmate was telling him the truth?

Could it be, for example, that the inmate was arrested while driving without a driver's license - but that he was driving a get-away car?

[Ghost of Huey Long]

7. I don't know, but I was hoping to raise awareness to where another reporter might cover this

Maybe help get some justice for this guy and find out just how often this is happening.

Thanks for kicking!

[Ghost of Huey Long]

6. to think, they complain about the cost of health care!!

What. the. Fuck!

We are in a huge amount of debt, and taxpayers are expected to pay to make some private prison rich?

People have no jobs, and we are paying 65,000 to lock someone up??

HELLO!! What is wrong with US?

[hfojvt]

9. Well some people in Boscobel have jobs

at the Super-max prison. I bet they pay pretty good too.

I remember before the Super-max was built back in the late 1990s, it was supposed to be a jobs boon for the Boscobel area.

But Garvey does need to provide more examples and he needs to verify this guy's story.

I remember meeting Garvey in Hub City when he was running against Tommy Thompson in 1996 or 1998. It may have been the same time I met Tammy Baldwin. I didn't think his campaign speech about the new Milwaukee stadium was the best angle to take though.

[Comrade Grumpy]

8. This kind of shit has got to stop.

[tpsbmam]

11. My impression is this is 100% legit and an accurate representation of both

the phenomenon and the case. Here's why:

1. He (and his firm) were asked by Judge Crabb to represent prisoners in a super-max class action suit. This posting is simply a snippet representing the kinds of things they're finding as they investigate. The DOJ refused to allow them access to the prisoners -- they had to obtain court orders to do so. This ain't some frivolous talking out of his ass post -- again, this is a snippet of what they've started finding at the super-max prison.

2. He pointed to other instances of this happening elsewhere. Here's 4 paragraphs and a picture from the NY Times story from 7/2/2012:



Richard Earl Garrett is the lead plaintiff in a class action suit against the town of Harpersville, Ala. Mr. Garrett has spent a total of 24 months in jail and owes $10,000, all for traffic and license violations that began a decade ago.

Poor Land in Jail as Companies Add Huge Fees for Probation

CHILDERSBURG, Ala. — Three years ago, Gina Ray, who is now 31 and unemployed, was fined $179 for speeding. She failed to show up at court (she says the ticket bore the wrong date), so her license was revoked.

When she was next pulled over, she was, of course, driving without a license. By then her fees added up to more than $1,500. Unable to pay, she was handed over to a private probation company and jailed — charged an additional fee for each day behind bars.

For that driving offense, Ms. Ray has been locked up three times for a total of 40 days and owes $3,170, much of it to the probation company. Her story, in hardscrabble, rural Alabama, where Krispy Kreme promises that “two can dine for $5.99,” is not about innocence.

<snip>

“With so many towns economically strapped, there is growing pressure on the courts to bring in money rather than mete out justice,” said Lisa W. Borden, a partner in Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, a large law firm in Birmingham, Ala., who has spent a great deal of time on the issue. “The companies they hire are aggressive. Those arrested are not told about the right to counsel or asked whether they are indigent or offered an alternative to fines and jail. There are real constitutional issues at stake.”

And there's more at the link, including information about some other states.

Here's a pertinent study by the Brennan Center for Justice at NY University School of Law: (GoHL, you can d/l the pdf, which I just did -- thought you might like to read this one -- VERY interesting!)

Executive Summary:

Many states are imposing new and often onerous “user fees” on individuals with criminal convic­tions. Yet far from being easy money, these fees impose severe – and often hidden – costs on com­munities, taxpayers, and indigent people convicted of crimes. They create new paths to prison for those unable to pay their debts and make it harder to find employment and housing as well to meet child support obligations.

This report examines practices in the fifteen states with the highest prison populations, which to­gether account for more than 60 percent of all state criminal filings. We focused primarily on the proliferation of “user fees,” financial obligations imposed not for any traditional criminal justice purpose such as punishment, deterrence, or rehabilitation but rather to fund tight state budgets.

Across the board, we found that states are introducing new user fees, rais­ing the dollar amounts of existing fees, and intensifying the collection of fees and other forms of criminal justice debt such as fines and restitution. But in the rush to collect, made all the more intense by the fiscal crises in many states, no one is considering the ways in which the resulting debt can undermine reentry prospects, pave the way back to prison or jail, and result in yet more costs to the public.

So, my vote is this short blog post is very accurate and opened my eyes to a phenomenon I had missed -- thanks, GoHL!

K&R

[Downtown Hound]

12. For all those who say all law enforcement isn't bad:

It doesn't matter if a cop or correctional officer is a good person as an individual. There were lots of "good" Germans who fought for the Nazis in WW2 as well. The bottom line is if you are a part of law enforcement in any way, you are on the wrong side of history. They have waged a campaign of repression, brutality, and segregation that has destroyed countless lives, and it has to stop.

[coalition_unwilling]

13. This was a difficult lesson for me to learn and one I am

still, in large part, learning.

I came to this thinking most law enforcement personnel are proletariat, working class folk. My experiences interacting with Los Angeles Police Dept personnel during Occupy Los Angeles events now cause me to think of them as 'class traitors' who serve the interests of the 1%.