Political scandals
What?!? Private prisons suing states for millions if they don’t stay full
Sep 26, 2013 8:44 AM
by Terry Shropshire

Low crime rates bad for business for white-owned private prisons; they demand states keep them full

The prison-industrial complex is so out of control that private prisons have the sheer audacity to order states to keep beds full or face their wrath with stiff financial penalties, according to reports. Private prisons in some states have language in their contracts that state if they fall below a certain percentage of capacity that the states must pay the private prisons millions of dollars, lest they face a lawsuit for millions more.

And guess what? The private prisons, which are holding cash-starved states hostage, are getting away with it, says advocacy group, In the Public Interest.

In the Public Interest has reviewed more than 60 contracts between private prison companies and state and local governments across the country, and found language mentioning “quotas” for prisoners in nearly two-thirds of those contracts reviewed. Those quotas can range from a mandatory occupancy of, for example, 70 percent occupancy in California to up to 100 percent in some prisons in Arizona.

It is very interesting and telling that so few major national news organization are willing to report on the monstrous, ravenous and criminal system that is devouring hundreds of thousands of black and brown boys. Even those who do not subscribe to conspiracy theories have looked askance at this shocking report.

Welcome to the greatest manifestation of modern-day slavery, ladies and gentlemen.

One of those private prisons, The Corrections Corporation of America, made an offer last year to the governors of 48 states to operate their prisons on 20-year contracts, according to In the Public Interest.

What makes these deals so odious and unscrupulous? Take a look:

1) The offer included a demand that those prisons remain 90 percent full for the duration of the operating agreement. You know what that means: if there are not enough prisoners then there will be an unspoken push for police to arrest more people and to have the courts send more to prison for petty, frivolous and nonviolent crimes. There will also be a “nudge” for judges to hand down longer or maximum sentences to satisfy this “quota.”

2) Private prison companies have also backed measures such as “three-strike” laws to maintain high prison occupancy.

3) When the crime rate drops so low that the occupancy requirements can’t be met, taxpayers are left footing the bill for unused facilities.

The report found that 41 of 62 contracts reviewed contained occupancy requirements, with the highest occupancy rates found in Arizona, Oklahoma and Virginia.

In Colorado, Democratic Gov. John Hinklooper agreed to close down five state-run prisons and instead send inmates to CCA’s three corrections facilities. That cost taxpayers at least $2 million to maintain the unused facilities.

It is getting more difficult to rationalize the societal cost of keeping prisons full just to satisfy private investors who treat prisoners as commodity and cattle .

no wonder why america has become a police state.

To much corruption in Prison Corps.

i'd say. thats insane that they can sue the city for not keeping the prisons filled, just insane. so if theres no bad guys, the police will be pushed into making arrests for anything they can just to get people in prison. and if they dont, the taxpayers have to pay the bill for unused facilities, or the state gets sued for millions more. just crazy

Dude, your country is soooo effed-up!! I wonder why y'all keep saying "it's the best country in the world" when clearly it isn't!

I've always said, that allowing
privately owned and operated prisons
is a mistake, that never should have
been made.

We ARE the greatest country in the World!!....I wouldn't live anywhere else if you paid me!

the power of brainwashing in action.

America RULES the world.....haha!

America rules two things right now: Jack'n'**** and Jack left town

Allowing? Not exactly. Full prisons demanded building new ones or shorter sentences for worse crimes. That's what spawned 25-life and flexible times for 'good behavior'. Both failed, even in conjunction. The 'contracts' for the new 'facilities' put even more strain on the taxpayers. Charles Manson, Dahlmer, BTK etc were given consecutive life sentences or without the possibility for parole. So the younger impressionable criminals learn the ins and outs from older inmates in exchange for drugs orders and money from the outside get in. Everyone is happy right? Haha, no. The 1% aren't getting kickbacks they're paying it out to construction companies and staff. The only way to stop the vicious cycle is to pass the buck to whoever is brave enough to assume the costly corrections 'business'. That's what it is, accounting, staff, occupants, basically the largest and least comfortable hotels in the country.
The states thought with the rate of inflation, birth rates, there's no chance in hell these guys will fall below capacity, we'll have the taxpayers off our backs, the sentences will be shorter to free space for their facilities and they'll be bankrupt allowing usto swoop back in assume control again and raise taxes after the economy has had a chance to recover. Great plan A-hole team... FAIL.
I'm not going out on the limb to guess who or what color the owners are, that doesn't mean anything. What means something is what Shropshire says, "the greatest manifestation of modern day slavery". Pretty accurate statement but you left out LEGAL slavery. You also left out what is arguably the biggest collection of slaves in the history of the world IF you include the legislators that bit the worm and the taxpayers flapping helplessly in the nets from quota fines or finding themselves property of CCA.
Yes I said that the color race creed w/e of the shareholders is MEANINGLESS. It's not one owner. I'm not so sure that it's legal either but if the news won't touch the issue then WE THE PEOPLE can't possess the truth. Possession is 9/10ths of the law, so the only ones privileged enough hold enough stock can see the (maybe not legal) contracts.

Ugh...effin foreigners.....lol

This ^^^ It never should of been turned into a business .

So if they are OVER crowded, they pay the state right ? * just wishing *

And what happened to all that "prision over crowding " a few years ago ? Or is privation the brainstorm solution ?

To me YOU are the foreigner

The revolving door. Prisoner-prison=parolee. Prison-prisoner=bonuses for reforming efficiency. The people's safety is not a priority, it's profit guaranteed, growth guaranteed, job growth guaranteed, expansion guaranteed, return on investment guaranteed and it's coming out of YOUR (yes, all of you) pocket. If the states have to pay exorbitant fines they will shutdown and or turn over control to CCA and there is no way out of it because they can transfer prisoners at will due to any excuse they want to. If your not a stock holder there's nothing you can do about it because they don't answer to the public, taxpayers or the government. WE answer to them.

Many things should not have been turned into a business, like people's health for exemple. Schools, Churches, Prisons, DMV... They're all run like businesses and we all know that when money talks BS walks. As far as capitalism is concerned people's lives are BS if it doesn't bring in money.
If only Prison business was your only concern over in your insane land of the incarcerated.

The only out we have is invalidating the contracts for being unconstitutional, but in 48 of 51 states, states rights check the Federal control. Checks and balances have come back to bite us in the ***. Getting them out of any state would require at least 4 times operating costs in legal fees, severance pay, seizure... then we'd have to pay to run them with rusty or green staff. It wouldn't be pretty and there's 47 states left to reclaim. It could total more than our national deficit just to get them to sell our people and (real) property back to us. They're incorporated so we'd have to buy out all the shareholders.

Amen to that but that's not our only worry. Just one most of us don't know we have.

Oh please.. Blacks commit black on black crimes & more crimes than any other group. And they are not entering prisons & learning from a FEW OLD WHITE serial killers.

All the Liberals that were against the death penalty is the ONLY reason those guys ^^^^ were given 'back to back life sentences "

* More white males receive the death penalty, despite that fact that WHITES are the MINORITY in prison *
( All death penalty stats, including the NAACP says this- NOT a secret)

IF states still had the death penalty, IF blacks didn't commit so many crimes & repeatedly. The prisons wouldn't have been overflowing in the first place
Prisons would of remained a revolving door in a much more financially affordable way as well as so as society, victims, families having a sense of justice.

It is the white killers fault
It is the white politicians fault
It is the white private prison owners fault.

What next? It is a battle flag's fault for flying near a prison, and all the black repeat offenders started suffering from genetic memory flashbacks ?

* I'm not going out on a limb here am I ? You made this about race .... geez, turn off MSNBC for a week *

Don't know and don't care, unless they have a relative who's locked up.

Black, white, red... It shouldn't matter, they're still convicts and the Prison system's gonna make its bucks on them regardless of gender or color.