This Is Why Prisons For Profit Is A Very Bad Idea

Damocles

Damocles

Accedo!
Staff member
http://cbs3.com/wireapnewspa/Prosecutors.Pa.judges.2.1690459.html

Feds: Attorney Taped Pa. Judges Discussing Plot

SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) ― Two former county judges discussed receiving kickbacks and plotted perjury with the owner of a private juvenile detention facility, who recorded the conversations, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors on Tuesday filed a brief including transcripts of conversations they say were between attorney Robert Powell and former Luzerne County judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella.

The judges have been accused of taking $2.8 million in kickbacks from Powell and the builder of the detention center to send youth offenders to certain for-profit detention facilities. The scandal prompted the state Supreme Court to vacate thousands of juvenile convictions.

Prosecutors say the transcripts show the judges discussing the payments and scheming to commit perjury.

Federal prosecutors said Conahan met with Powell in July 2008 to discuss how they and Ciavarella could thwart the investigation into their financial connections to the PA Child Care juvenile detention center, which was then co-owned by Powell.

"I'd never do anything to hurt you, but I never got the cash from anybody. That's the story, and you better stick to it," Conahan told Powell, who had become a federal informant and was recording the conversation, according to a transcript included in the brief.

More at link...
 
Basically, they took money to convict innocent children and send them to a Prison for Profit....
 
i agree

prisons should never be private. if you can't afford to keep up your current prison's, then let people out. if we legalized marijuana, our prison populatoin would likely decrease by nearly 50%....not that 50% are in for marijuana, however, many are in because marijuana is illegal and is thus sold side by side with dangerous drugs like cocaine, crack, meth, herione....etc...
 
Private prisons, if they become widespread, will naturally have an incentive to give political contributions to "law and order" candidates. Which will create a further perverse incentive for such candidates. It's just a bad idea all around. Private prisons aren't even a free market. A single-buyer situation can never simulate a true market, it will always be more inefficient, unnecessarily waste money on middle men, and create perverse political incentives in our justice system.
 
There is just no possible way in the "land of the free" that we should incentivize imprisoning citizens for profit. It's just sick.

The whole idiotic "War on Drugs" needs to be ashcanned as well. Can we possibly be more moronic than to shout about free then imprison more people than any other 1st world nation?
 
Yurt said:
hard to say, but my opinion is yes...what do yoiu think?
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If judges can be corrupted to send innocent children to prison by cash, then so can cops. It would only make it easier if they were private; imagine the prisons, the cops, and the court system all incentivized to put more people in prison.
 
SmarterThanYou said:
depends. I think a small community could have a very decent and honest police force. large cities? not so much.
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my thinking is, police action is protected by certain constitutional rights because they are employed by the state and are the state for all intents and purposes. if we allow a private police force, are we going to hold them to the same constitutional safeguards? i know private actors will be bound the same as state actors if they're job is tradionally a government job, however, if we do that, then what is the difference between a government police force and private? the pay? are we going to have advertisements on police cars like nascar?
 
Yurt said:
my thinking is, police action is protected by certain constitutional rights because they are employed by the state and are the state for all intents and purposes. if we allow a private police force, are we going to hold them to the same constitutional safeguards? i know private actors will be bound the same as state actors if they're job is tradionally a government job, however, if we do that, then what is the difference between a government police force and private? the pay? are we going to have advertisements on police cars like nascar?
Click to expand...

sty.............
 
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