Madison Pauly at Mother Jones writes—A Damning Federal Report Just Confirmed Our Worst Fears About Private Prisons:
Federal prisons run by private prison companies aren't just less safe and less secure than than their publicly run counterparts. They're also inadequately supervised by the federal Bureau of Prisons, which has outsourced the incarceration of 12 percent of its inmates to three giant for-profit prison companies, while allowing gaps in oversight that endangered inmates and put their rights at risk.
That's the takeaway from a damning new report by the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General. The report, released Thursday, examined how the BOP monitored its contracts with three of the nation's largest private prison companies: Corrections Corporation of America, the GEO Group, and Management and Training Corporation. For $639 million, these corporations run the country's 14 private federal prisons, incarcerating around 22,660 people as of December—mainly low-security immigrants serving short sentences. [...]
Compared to federal prisons of similar sizes, locations, and security levels, the private facilities had a 28 percent higher rate of inmate-on-inmate assaults, and more than twice as many inmate-on-staff assaults per capita between 2011 and 2014. Prison officials also found nearly twice as many weapons and eight times as many cellphones in private prisons as compared to BOP prisons, per capita. The inspector general also found that private prisons went on "lockdown" much more frequently, confining inmates to their quarters "often in response to a disturbance or incident that threatens the secure and orderly running of the prison." The number of private prison lockdowns: 101; in BOP-run prisons: 11.
HIGH IMPACT STORIES • TOP COMMENTS
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2006—Experts to Bush: Back Off, Iran is "Not a Crisis":
Apprehensive that Bush's "hard line" toward Iran is a "prelude" to a U.S military campaign against Iran, 21 former U.S. generals, diplomats and national security officials will release an open letter to the president tomorrow, demanding, according to the Los Angeles Times, a "a complete overhaul of U.S. policy toward both Iran and Iraq." More from the Times:
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Robert G. Gard, one of the letter's signers and a former military assistant to Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara in the 1960s, said the group was particularly concerned about administration policies toward Iran, believing them to be a possible prelude to a military attack on suspected nuclear sites in that country.
..."It's not a crisis," Gard said in a telephone interview. "To call the Iranian situation a 'crisis' connotes you have to do something right now, like bomb them."
As Plutonium Page diaried well more than a year ago, these voices are being joined to that of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Hans Blix.
It appears that any action against Iran will not be able to filed under the "Nobody could have anticipated ..." category in the Bush White House. When such experts come out so openly and vigorously - and preemptively - against a destructive path, there's hope that no matter how desperately the president wants to expand the violence, the public and the press will be armed with solid ammunition against the attempt.
On today's “encore presentation” Kagro in the Morning show, it’s the 8/17/15 show: Greg Dworkin rounds up 2016 headlines from opening weekend of the Iowa State Fair. Trump phones it in. ATT & NSA know everything you phone in. DHS monitor BLM activists. Are they the new "professional left?"
YouTube | iTunes | LibSyn | Support the show: Patreon; PayPal; PayPal Subscription