The Privatization of Death

(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Raw Story has an article on how Arizona, looking to close a gap on state debt, is looking to privatize prisons, and, prisons that house death row inmates.

The State of Arizona, seeking to close a $2 billion budget gap, is planning to open bidding on all but one of its prison facilities.

Included in the offerings to private firms is an opportunity to manage the captivity of those condemned to die: a move that, for the first time ever, would put a U.S. state’s death row in corporate hands, according to The New York Times.

This is an extremely bad idea, and, here’s why…

“For profit” prisons make their money based on the number of inmates they oversee.

“While executions would still be performed by the state, officials said, the Department of Corrections would relinquish all other day-to-day operations to the private operator and pay a per-diem fee for each prisoner,” the Times added.

This is not just a system that is open to abuses, it is a system that has already been abused.

The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.

Now, Arizona is looking to make death row “for profit”?  The more inmates on death row, the more a company makes?  And, to get those inmates, which judges are going to be receiving kickbacks?

I know what you are saying, “but, capital crimes cases are jury trials… how can a judge influence the jury?”

It is simple.  Judges issues orders to juries all the time on what they can consider during deliberations.  Judges are the people who allow evidence into court or not.  There are many, many cases where juries would have ruled one way over another if only they had seen evidence barred from the court by a judge.

Imagine, if you will, what it would be like to have “for profit” police departments.  Oh wait, don’t simply imagine it, read about it here, where in Arkansas, a small police department terrorized their own town.

JERICHO, Ark. — It was just too much, having to return to court twice on the same day to contest yet another traffic ticket, and Fire Chief Don Payne didn’t hesitate to tell the judge what he thought of the police and their speed traps.

The response from cops? They shot him. Right there in court.

Payne ended up in the hospital, but his shooting last week brought to a boil simmering tensions between residents of this tiny former cotton city and their police force. Drivers quickly learn to slow to a crawl along the gravel roads and the two-lane highway that run through Jericho, but they say sometimes that isn’t enough to fend off the city ticketing machine.

Tickets are a fund lifeline.  It’s a system where the more tickets, the more money.  And this was an entire police department run amok for profit.

So, we don’t have to imagine anymore.  The evidence of how “for profit” institutions corrupt the systems is already there in plain sight.

Now, we are going to privatize death?