I am amazed every morning about what new shenanigans that Trump's empowered lackey's sally forth, upon the growing number of apprehensive citizens living in America. AG Jeff Sessions has issued a sweeping new policy change last Friday. He has ordered all federal prosecutors to pursue the strictest charges and sentences in criminal cases. It is supposedly Mr. Sessions effort to crack down on drug use and violent crime, meant to reinforce public safety.
According to Mother Jones and Forbes Magazine, the CCA stock has sky-rocketed in stock value since Trump installed AG Jeff Sessions into his post. The amount of profit that the CCA and GEO group have reaped from increased American citizens incarceration, is staggering! The corporations encourage their employees to keep inmates as long as possible inside these prisons, by whatever means necessary, in order to continue compensation(profits) longer. It's simply an immoral crooked profit maker for shareholders. It has nothing to do with corrections and everything to do with increasing stock profits off the misery of others. Blatant greed is it's core value and only mission.
Does the AG Jeff Sessions, own any CCA or GEO stock? Does Jeff Sessions personally profit from enforcing rules, that send more people into prison slavery and keeps them there? Two of Sessions former aides are GEO lobbyists for private prisons. Is there any conflict of interest here?
If elected legislators, cities, local communities and private citizen's really want to change the criminal culture in America, they should be implementing programs that help communities build strong family units and participate in positive programs that deter youth from crime. Families need more community support through government funded programs that promote good role models and positive guidance in the lives of young people everyday. Young people need access to positive after-school activities and the opportunities to participate in these programs.
Communities also need sound mental health facilities that are affordable and accessible to troubled families and individuals. Easily accessible and affordable clinics are critically needed in every community in America.
Municipalities need to fund programs designed to vocationally prepare kids for jobs/future careers in conjunction, with basic educational standards designed to make each child a personal success story. Those efforts will ensure better cities, towns and a positively productive America. This is how we should be fighting drug use and violent crimes. It's accomplished by instilling hope for a better life and the necessary tools given, to make it so, for those who grow up in poverty.
The increasing construction of more CCA and GEO prisons, in their own negative and devastating ways, share limited similarities to the Prohibition Act. Strict Prohibition era law enforcement tactics, didn't stop anyone from drinking. Arresting offenders, merely increased crime statistics and the prison population. The law turned regular citizens into criminals overnight, effectively ruining their lives. I guess that's one way of stimulating job growth in America, make laws and enforce ways to criminalize everyone.
Until America's citizens and lawmakers get serious about helping to change and improve the quality of people's lives and especially, the lives of our youth, nothing will change for the better. Responsible legislators need to quit pouring money from taxpayers into war and put it into positive programs for our communities. Punitive laws that engender harsh and severe criminal charges to the maximum extent and accompanying sentences, that drive citizens, like herds of cattle into modern day gulags, do not "Make America Great Again". They merely guarantee increased crime statistics, public fear and generates increased private prison profits. People like Jeff Sessions, know it.
What are the more than 350,000 churches doing in America? Do the more than 350,000 churches actively lead positive steps in preventing crime and improving the opportunities to make the lives of their citizens, living in their communities better? Do they help make a positive impact offering guidance and actual hands-on help to correct societal missteps of young, impressionable individuals, through deeply sincere and caring religious offers of intervention? Do Christians who make up these churches, reach out before a young person's life is destroyed or wait till after they get a criminal record, if they do anything, at all?
I have personally witnessed a few churches(3), that are actively engaged, in Christ's mission, changing the less fortunate lives of the members in their congregations and their communities. More often than not, the only changes with definable positive outcomes, I've seen, are the personal fortunes of megachurch televangelists income and their personal promotions in marketing sales of their wares.
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Trump and Sessions: Great for the Private Prison Industry, Terrible for Civil Rights
JANUARY 5, 2017 | 1:30 PM
Donald Trump’s victory has been nothing but good news for the private prison industry.
The day after the election, shares of the two biggest private prison corporations — Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group — jumped 43 and 21 percent, respectively.
The day after the election, shares of the two biggest private prison corporations — Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group — jumped 43 and 21 percent, respectively.
And share prices continue to soar. Since Election Day, CCA and GEO’s stock value has increased by 75 and 54 percent.
Investors have good reason to believe that Trump will rely heavily on private prison companies. When asked how he planned to reform the country’s prison system during a town hall in March, Trump stated: “I do think we can do a lot of privatizations, and private prisons. It seems to work a lot better.”
Additionally, Trump’s hardline stance on immigration practically guarantees an increased need for detention facilities, a gap that private prison companies are more than eager to fill. If Congress fully funds Trump’s proposal to round up and deport 2 to 3 million immigrants in the first year of his presidency, the immigration detention population will more than quadruple — requiring the construction of scores of new jails for immigrants.
But the fact that the president-elect has selected Sen. Jeff Sessions as his nominee for attorney general gives the private prisons business even more to celebrate.
In October, according to Politico, GEO Group hired Sen. Sessions’ former aides David Stewart and Ryan Robichaux to lobby in favor of outsourcing federal corrections to private companies. GEO Group is the same private prison company that was accused of illegally donating to a Rebuild America Now, a pro-Donald Trump super PAC, earlier this year.
The ACLU does not endorse or oppose any nominee for public office, but we do analyze their track records. We are alarmed that if Sessions were confirmed as attorney general, the private prison lobby could have direct access to the head of the Department of Justice and tremendous influence over the Trump administration.
By their nature, private prisons depend on and profit from the mass imprisonment of human beings. And decades of experience have shown that handing people in government custody over to for-profit companies is a recipe for abuse and neglect. For example, at one GEO-run immigration detention facility in Colorado, Evalin Ali-Mandza, a 46-year-old immigrant from Gabon, died of a heart attack after medical staff waited nearly an hour to call an ambulance. One of the nurses even chose to prioritize filling out paperwork over dialing 911.
Federal officials have recognized this reality.
In August, the Justice Department concluded that private prisons “compare poorly” to federally run prisons and directed the Bureau of Prisons to begin phasing out its private prison contracts. An expert advisory panel similarly recommended on December 1 that the Department of Homeland Security shift away from its own private prison contracts. As attorney general, Sessions should not be tempted to maintain the status quo and ignore the clear evidence that private prisons do not “work better.”
Publicly traded for-profit prison corporations like CCA and GEO owe a fiduciary duty to their shareholders — the public, the human beings in their custody, and their own employees be damned. And they have demonstrated their priorities time and time again.
In one ACLU case, a federal court found CCA in contempt because the company did not implement court-ordered improvements that would have made the prison safer. The year after a CCA employee was killed in a prison riot, company executives refused to hold a moment of silence in his honor at the annual shareholder meeting. Apparently, trying to mislead the public and escape this record of scandalous behavior, CCA recently rebranded itself “CoreCivic: A Diversified Government Solutions Company.”
Families and communities have suffered terribly from the mass incarceration binge. Yet year after year, the private prison industry and its stockholders have made billions off of this human misery. If implemented, Trump and Sessions’ hardline stances toward criminal justice and immigration have the potential to massively increase federal incarceration and immigration detention rates in the United States. And with direct access to Sessions from his former aides, it seems the private prison industry stands to gain tremendously if he is confirmed as attorney general.
"Good Day" and "Boner Appertite!"
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