|
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
HomeBorder AngelsCCA Prevention: How To Stop A Private PrisonCorrections Corporation of America Is Bad NewsBullets Outta Guns Youth Poetry WorkshopDancing In Dissent Poetry For ActivismThe Langston Hughes Poetry CircleEventsHilliard Harper Retirement PoemLinksMixtec Indians From Oaxaca, Mexico Struggle To Escape Sweat Shops in Tijuana, MexicoOrder OnlinePoetryThree DeucesVigil for Hiroshima & NagasakiContact
|
LET'S GET BUSY! Go to www.change.org Click on View All Actions Click
on Browse by Cause Click on Human Rights Click on Stop Corrections Corporation of America Private Prison
in San Diego View the poem Oppose & Abolish and sign petition. Send to suggested officials and your friends... This
is Jim Moreno's Prison Stopping Formula!
Greetings Artivists: Seven Easy
Steps To Stop A Prison Step 1: Go to www.change.org Step 2: Click on View
All Actions. Step 3: Click
on Browse by Cause. Step
4: Click on Human Rights Step
5: Click on Stop Corrections Corporation of America Private Prison in San Diego. Add
your own comments, e.g., that you don't want that prison here. Decide what you'd rather have instead of a gulag in Otay Mesa (hospital, school, college or university, a place for the homeless, a hospital, school, and college for the homeless, etc.). Step 6: Every Other Day do the same thing with Congressional Representives Barbara Boxer (619) 239-3884, and Bob Filner, (619 422-5963. Step 7: Once a week call 202 456-1414, the White House Switchboard, and tell Barack Obama that you disagree with Alan Bersin's policies and you want him removed, e.g. 5,000 human beings have died trying to cross the desert since Bersin's 1994 Operation Gatekeeper was put in place. Government policy makers who create policy that causes death are not part of American values.
Problems
With Private Prisons Imagine going into Family
Court, Superior Court, Civil Court or Federal Court and you see the letters CCA underneath. You don't
know that CCA means Corrections Corporation of America. You don't know that in a major, influencing way a private
prison that needs 90% of it's beds filled to cover costs and make a profit is part of your court system.
You don't know that there have been $180 million dollars in law suits against this prison corporation including
employees selling drugs to inmates, problems with controlling violence, poor to no medical care, and wrongful
death litigation among others. You don't know that two judges in Pennsylvania are serving
prison sentences for accepting $2.8 million dollars in bribes from a prison corporation that gave the
judges money for giving minors longer sentences in their private prison. Now imagine you don't
have a car and your court has been moved outside the San Diego City limits so far away that you might miss your
court date and receive a prison sentence because you didn't have transportation and you weren't able to find the
court. You also find people reluctant to help you because you struggle with the language. All
this works in favor of the company that runs the prison. They have to keep their prison 90 % full to cover
costs and make a profit. The company is Corrections Corporation of America. The court is the Immigration
Court. The charges are not criminal, they're civil so you are not even a criminal and you are being forced
to run a legal gauntlet leading to a company making a profit from your poverty and suffering simply by not
having proper documentation. The only thing missing from the Immigration Court/CCA sign
on this page is an insignia of a kangaroo. Corrections Corporation of America is bad news with
a bad history. We don't want another prison in San Diego, especially a private one run by a corporation with a checkered history. The potential for abuse is manifold.
Private prisons had such a bad record of prisoner abuse in the nineteenth century in the United States
they were outlawed by the turn of the century. A report released in December of 2003 by Philip Mattera and Mafruza Khan of Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First in Washington, DC
and Stephen Nathan of Prison Privatisation Report International in
London made the following conclusion about privitization of prisons and Corrections Corporation of America: As this report shows, in spite of these efforts to improve,
CCA has not been a success even by its own standards. CCA continues to be plagued by many of the same kinds of operational deficiencies,
scandals
and mismanagement that characterized its performance during its early years. It is no surprise that the company acknowledges that, “The
operation of correctional and detention facilities by private entities has not achieved complete acceptance
by either governments or thepublic. CCA’s record is a clear example of how the pursuit of profit stands in the way of carrying out a core public
function such as corrections. It is time for the public to know that independentinvestigators
have failed to find clear evidence
that private prison management is superior in terms of quality, recidivism rates or cost. CCA has succeeded in staying in business for twodecades, but it has not succeeded
in demonstrating that prison privatization is socially, economically or ethically
acceptable. Indeed, there have already been lawsuits against
CCA in San Diego County, e.g., the litigation for
medical negligence to Francisco Castaneda, who had
his penis amputated and died several months later when pleas for cancer treatment were ignored by CCA and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.). And isn't what happened to Mr. Castaneda a metaphor for the history of racism (slavery,
Jim Crow, Prison-Industrial Complex - see Ruth Gilmore and her book Golden Gulag)
in this country and the emasculation of men of color? CCA also
faced litigation from San Diego ACLU for triple-celling,
a practice where two man cells are packed
with a third man who then sleeps on a mat by the toilet. A
bad practice for ethics but good for profits. Read about it at the ACLU website, www.aclusandiego.org . Type in a search for Corrections Corporations of America. Bring some coffee; you'll be
reading for a while about neglect and abuse that seems to be policy. Follow the Seven Simple Steps in the above and stop this same old plantation, new
name exercise in exploiting people of color. As the great grandson of an immigrant, as a nation of immigrants,
a private prison for immigrants is a step in the wrong direction and a slap in the face to any immigrant
descendant, including you and me. Jim Moreno, January 2010
Enter content here Enter content here |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Enter supporting content here