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Why Is Louisiana The Prison Capital Of The World? Police Profit By Keeping Private Prisons Full

by on Tuesday, May 15, 2012 at 5:18 pm EDT in Economy, Justice System, Politics

The $182 million private prison industry in Louisiana thrives from a system rife with conflicts of interest, not unlike the kinds found in the most corrupt third world countries. According to a scathing article this Sunday in The New Orleans Times-Picayune, the very people entrusted to enforce the law in the state have deep financial ties to the for-profit prisons, which house a majority of all Louisiana inmates.

The article states that “most prison entrepreneurs happen to be rural sheriffs,” and the “prison business model is built on head counts.” 

In the early nineties, prison overcrowding had become such a massive problem for the state, that the cash-strapped government decided to forego building new state prisons, and instead encouraged sheriffs to pay for private prison construction. In return, they would, of course, enjoy a cut of all future profits. “The financial incentives were so sweet, and the corrections jobs so sought after, that new prisons sprouted up all over rural Louisiana.”

Two decades later, this now-entrenched private prison system has helped to double Louisiana’s prison population. In fact, the state wins the distinction of imprisoning more of its residents than any other legal jurisdiction on the planet.

Despite Louisiana having the highest murder rate in the country, it surprisingly “has a much lower percentage of people incarcerated for violent offenses [when compared to the national average], and a much higher percentage behind bars for drug offenses [when compared to the national average] …”

Why, you ask? Because violent criminals (murderers, rapists, armed robbers, etc) get sent to state prisons, whereas the non-violent offenders are housed at private ‘for-profit’ prisons. The sheriffs therefore have a financial incentive to find and charge non-violent offenders.

According to another recent article in the Times-Picayune, “more than half of Louisianians sentenced to state time are in the custody of local sheriffs, who must keep their prison beds full to turn a profit.” And the sheriffs are a powerful lobby force to be reckoned with. They often move to block all legislative attempts to reduce sentences for non-violent offenses, or for “shaving time” for inmates with good behavior.

But the profiteering goes even beyond the sheriffs. Sunday’s article describes the entire judicial system as being in on ‘the take’:

“You have people who are so invested in maintaining the present system — not just the sheriffs, but judges, prosecutors, other people who have links to it,” said Burk Foster, a former professor at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette and an expert on Louisiana prisons. “They don’t want to see the prison system get smaller or the number of people in custody reduced, even though the crime rate is down, because the good old boys are all linked together in the punishment network, which is good for them financially and politically.”

Even townships profit off the private prison industry, by charging them exorbitant fees to operate within their town borders. Some of the smallest rural towns in Louisiana are leasing their ‘prison rights’ to sheriffs and private companies for hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. And these prisons bring much-needed jobs to the townsfolk, who line up to become correction officers.

One of the biggest prison magnates in all of Louisiana, incidentally, happens to be an ordained minister, who has become filthy rich off of incarcerating his fellow citizens. 

The task of putting bodies in private prison cells now impacts the livelihoods of many important people. Wardens and sheriffs work hand-in-hand, daily, to ensure the profits continue unabated:

Today, wardens make daily rounds of calls to other sheriffs’ prisons in search of convicts to fill their beds. Urban areas such as New Orleans and Baton Rouge have an excess of sentenced criminals, while prisons in remote parishes must import inmates to survive.

The more empty beds, the more an operation sinks into the red. With maximum occupancy and a thrifty touch with expenses, a sheriff can divert the profits to his law enforcement arm, outfitting his deputies with new squad cars, guns and laptops.

To fatten profits, inmates in these private facilities are offered little, if any, rehabilitation. Because “putting people in cells” is merely half the equation to this business model. Once they’ve found someone to incarcerate, spending as little money as possible on him becomes the next priority. In Louisiana, each inmate in a private prison fetches $24.39 a day in state money. The ones in state prisons fetch $55 a day. 

This means the most violent criminals (housed at state facilities) — many of whom are incarcerated for life — take vocational classes, and prepare for careers they will never have, like auto mechanics, plumbing, electrical, welding, etc.

Non-violent criminals, on the other hand — sentenced for things like drug possession, theft, etc. — will get sent to a private prison where they will do little more than sit in an overcrowded 80-man cell for months or years on end, gaining no skills that might prepare them to qualify for law-abiding work upon release.

And though sheriffs would like to keep them locked up indefinitely, most of these non-violent criminals will eventually be released back into society. On their release date, they will reenter the community with a criminal record and no new vocational skills (making it virtually impossible to find a job), as well as ten dollars and a 1-way bus ticket from the prison.

This, of course, helps to ensure they return as repeat offenders — the bread and butter of this insidious business.

WATCH: Insurance Company Aetna Sues Out-Of-Network Surgeons For Price Gouging Their Patients By 2,500%

by on Friday, February 3, 2012 at 3:44 pm EDT in Healthcare, Politics

Bloomberg reports that health insurer Aetna is now suing seven ‘out-of-network’ California surgery centers, for over-billing them by as much as 2,500% for standard medical procedures. A few examples of the excessive charges include:

$66,000 to treat a bunion (normally costs $3,600),

$56,980 for a ‘bedside consultation,’

$99,750 to get earwax removed,

$119,671 for lower back disc-surgery (normally $6,000)

WATCH:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkRYYI7gC6Q[/youtube]

This serves as a perfect example of how the U.S. ‘for-profit’ healthcare industry price gouges, not only at the payer level, but also at the provider level. 

Wall Street Protesters Plan To Turn Lower Manhattan Into America’s ‘Tahrir Square’

by on Saturday, September 17, 2011 at 4:45 pm EDT in Occupy Wall Street, Politics

Numbers growing at the #occupywallstreet protest. Shouts of "Shut It Down!"

Thousands of peaceful protesters have descended on New York City’s financial district today to send a loud message to President Barack Obama: “End the influence money has over our representatives in Washington”.

The protesters intend to create a ‘city of tents’ and remain there for as long as it takes for their “one demand” to be met.

The organizers, including Vancouver-based Adbusters Magazine, US Day of Rage, the Anonymous hacktivist group, and the people of the NYC General Assembly, hope to press the US government to take action against its own corporate hijacking — a result of the recent controversial Supreme Court ruling, Citizens United.

As expressed by the organizers:

Unfortunately, free and fair elections are a thing of the past in America. Because of recent Supreme Court decisions, money is flowing freely and unaccountably into the American electoral process. Elections will be swayed by interests opposed to those of the United States. Corporations, even those owned by foreign shareholders, will and do use money to act as the voices of millions, while individual citizens, the legitimate voters, are silenced and demoralized by the farce of American Democracy. 

The President and the First Lady, ironically enough, will be in New York City this Monday (Sept 19-20) schmoozing those same moneyed-interests at a private $38,500 per person Park Avenue fundraising event. The protesters hope to extend an invitation to the President to come downtown and to “join our people’s assembly”.

At the OccupyWallStreet website, the organizers describe the protesters as every American, apart from the corrupted establishment:

Occupy Wall Street is a leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.

There are solidarity protests also being held in other parts of the world, including Milan, Madrid, Valencia, London, Lisbon, Athens, San Francisco, Santander, Madison, Amsterdam, Los Angeles and now Algeria and Israel.

Here is footage of the protests:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdfVNNnQu6E[/youtube]

You can continue to watch the protests via this live feed: LiveStream 

Twitter hashtags to follow: #OccupyWallStreet, #TakeWallStreet, #Sep17 

Organizer Twitter Accts: @Adbusters, @USDayOfRage, @AnonOps, @OccupyWallSt

EDIT: Originally, the number of protesters was estimated to be “Tens of thousands”. In light of new information that estimate has been revised.

WATCH: US State Dept. Spokesman Struggles To Explain US Hypocrisy In Egypt

by on Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 2:26 am EDT in Middle East, World

Here’s an excellent al Jazeera interview that perfectly demonstrates America’s misguided and hypocritical Middle East policy. US State Department Spokesman PJ Crowley gets tongue-tied trying to explain how the United States can on one hand claim to support the Egyptian protesters in their fight against torture, poverty, corruption & unemployment, while simultaneously propping up their brutal […]

Watch: How Obama Lost His Grass Roots Supporters – In A Nutshell

by on Friday, November 5, 2010 at 12:51 am EDT in Politics

Here is a CAN’T MISS discussion between Dylan Ratigan, Glenn Greenwald and Cenk Uygur on the contentious divisions which now exist between Progressives and the President (and the Democratic Party).  The three identify Obama’s ultimate betrayal — which underlies a series of more easily identifiable ones, including his deliberate undermining of meaningful health care reform, […]

Why Obama’s Policies Put Wall Street’s Interests Ahead Of Main Street’s

by on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 1:57 pm EDT in Politics

Dan Froomkin at Huffington Post connects the dots: Many of [Obama’s] chief financial advisers have pocketed extraordinary amount of money from banks and Wall Street, and presumably intend to do so again. They are part of the banker class, and their loyalties have been bought and paid for. Examples? Obama’s top economic adviser, Larry Summers: […]

The Status Quo And How Washington Ensures It

by on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 12:03 pm EDT in Politics

A major impasse appears to exist these days between Democrats and Republicans on virtually every issue.  On the surface, it would seem it’s all ideology-based.  But upon closer inspection, their hostilities are, in large part, incited by media-manufactured outrage, where partisan vitriol and ideological demagoguery drowns out all thoughtful discourse. Unfortunately, our country is in […]

Obama’s ‘Lobbyist Ban’: A White House ‘Aspiration’ To Remain Unenforced

by on Monday, October 12, 2009 at 10:25 am EDT in Politics, World

Kevin Bogardus of The Hill did a nice follow-up on the status of Obama’s campaign promise to ban all lobbyists from serving in his administration.  The White House issued a ‘guidance’ on the matter two weeks ago, and here’s what Bogardus’s investigative reporting uncovered: The Hill contacted all 20 Cabinet-level agencies to see if they […]