Sensible Sentencing and the Prison Industrial Complex

Interesting piece of excellent investigative blogging by Tane on The Standard about the connections between the Sensible Sentencing Trust and the Prison Industrial Complex. I have blogged many times that one of the problems with corporate prisons is that they fund victims rights groups to create a shrill lynch mob public discourse to frighten and infuriate the electorate into voting for more medieval law and order policy to lock people up for longer periods of time, this horribly distorts justice with an incarceration profit motive that once started is almost impossible to break, and thanks to Simon Powers who has led that political knee jerk overreaction and that homophobic drunk from ACT who wants to screw our Bill of Rights to pass his $30 billion 3 strikes and you’re screwed policy.

Why is Sensible Sentencing so secretive about who fund them? It is utterly unacceptable that they be a front group for the private prison system that will not solve our prison problems, but only exacerbate them.

CCA and The GEO Group are major contributors to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a Washington, D.C. based public policy organization that develops model legislation that advances tough-on-crime legislation and free-market principles such as privatization.

Under their Criminal Justice Task Force, ALEC has developed and helped to successfully implement in many states “tough on crime” initiatives including “Truth in Sentencing” and “Three Strikes” laws. Corporations provide most of the funding for ALEC’s operating budget and influence its political agenda through participation in policy task forces. ALEC’s corporate funders include CCA and The GEO Group. In 1999, CCA made the President’s List for contributions to ALEC’s States and National Policy Summit; Wackenhut also sponsored the conference. Past cochairs of the Criminal Justice Task Force have included Brad Wiggins, then Director of Business Development at CCA and now a Senior Director of Site Acquisition, and John Rees, a former CCA vice president.

By funding and participating in ALEC’s Criminal Justice Task Forces, critics argue, private prison companies directly influence legislation for tougher, longer sentences.

We mustn’t let the Lynch mob dictate this debate, especially if they are receiving money from GEO.