AP Reports: Dead Inmate's Mother to Speak Against Private TX Prisons

[txaslftist]

Inmate's mother to speak against private Texas prisons


By JOHN MILLER Associated Press Writer

BOISE, Idaho — The mother of an Idaho inmate who killed himself in a private Texas prison on March 4 plans to urge Texas lawmakers to stop accepting out-of-state prisoners at their for-profit lockups.

Shirley Noble said she expects to speak Friday to the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee. She filed a $500,000 negligence claim against Idaho in August in Scot Noble Payne's death. Since 2005, Idaho has moved more than 500 inmates to Texas and Oklahoma to relieve overcrowding at home; Noble says the practice keeps prisoners like her son from family contact needed to rehabilitate them for their eventual return to freedom.

She also blames Idaho and The GEO Group, Inc. — the Florida-based private prison company that runs the Dickens County prison in Spur, Texas, where her son slashed his throat — for neglecting to monitor deteriorating conditions that Idaho officials now concede may have contributed to his suicide. Payne, 43, a convicted sex offender, was kept alone for months in a cell with a constantly wet floor, bloodstained sheets and smelly towels.

"It's what I have found out about GEO, the filth, and people being taken away from their families," Shirley Noble told The Associated Press about her reasons for testifying. "They can't afford the fares to go visit. They can't afford the excess telephone bills."

After Payne's death, Idaho Department of Correction officials investigated and called Dickens the worst prison they'd ever seen. The state has until early November to respond to Noble's claim. She said she'll sue if Idaho doesn't settle.

Separately, she said she's working with a Laredo, Texas-based lawyer, Ron Rodriguez. In 2006, he won a $47.5 million verdict against Wackenhut Corrections Corp., which became GEO, on claims it destroyed evidence in an inmate's beating death.

Texas state Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat who chairs the Criminal Justice Committee, called Friday's hearing just as scrutiny of GEO in his state is intensifying. Texas closed the 200-bed Coke County Juvenile Center, run by GEO, and canceled the state contract for the facility last week over shortcomings such as dirty bed sheets, feces-smeared cells and insects in the food — despite the presence of state monitors.

More here...

http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2007/10/mother-of-idaho-inmate-will-testify.html

[nashville_brook]

1. seems to be very good sense to keep offenders close to family for rehabilitation

warehousing inmates across the country seems absurd if you want to reduce recidivism.

but -- that's not what they want, is it. it's profit. they've adopted the Amazon.com approach of remote warehousing.

[txaslftist]

2. Yep. It' s not about rehabilitation or treatment; it's about profit.

GEO makes a profit by warehousing prisoners in a run down facility with low-wage guards and the bare minimum of rehabilitation efforts. IIRC the same guy here who committed suicide actually effected an escape from the facility a few months earlier.

[nashville_brook]

3. it doesn't take a rocket scientist to imagine the destructivness of profit motive

in the prison system. in a SOCIETY as opposed to a CORPORATION, we seek to rehabilitate offenders in order that we might improve the overall health of our society. corporations have absolutely NO REASON to provide rehabilitative programs -- they actually have a reason NOT TO as they have a negative impact on the bottom line.

the FREE MARKET is a giant lie -- the "market" is a beast that must be treated as such. if we are going to use profit-seeking corporations to perform SOCIETY's functions we have the responsibility to make damn sure they do what we, the people, society, tell them to do. we have the responsibility to oversee their behavior and progress. we have the responsibility to punish them when they don't do their job.

the *free market* isn't going to magically do it on it's own.

[txaslftist]

4. Prison can't be a "for profit" undertaking.

Ultimately every inmate housed there is paid for by the taxpayer. Prisons, accordingly, as a pure function of their existence, operate at a loss.

Introducing another actor into the process who is taking profits from this enterprise only makes the net available for rehabilitation, security, facilities, etc less.

The pot gets smaller and the facilities get worse.

[nashville_brook]

6. so, if they can't (literally) create profit -- then why/how/who/what

during the Reagan administration, when all the deregulation and privatization first began in earnest, many people went apeshit -- i know i did. it was absurd on it's FACE that you could take oversight and regulation out of the equation and have a functioning society.

much like the subprime debacle, though, other people were drunk with the adolescent dream (magical thinking) that this thing called The Free Market would somehow "self-regulate." it would take care of itself. there was no need for social scientists and advocates to get their panties all wadded up -- just RELAXXXXXXXXX.


well, guess what. we were right.

but here's the thing, these fuckers are *somehow* making money in these corporations, so how is it done? i'll tell you. it's stealing. plain and simple.

[Matariki]

5. There are some things that just SHOULD NOT be run by for profit, private companies.

Prisons being one. The military, schools and Social Security being some others.

Having a profit motive for incarcerating people or going to war is a VERY, *VERY* BAD IDEA.