Okayyyy, I’ll join everyone else in responding to today’s news (instead of just sighing, gazing into middle distance). The profit incentive baked into private prisons is a mess. But you know what else is a HUGE MESS?

The revenue incentive in the federal jail market. 🧵

The federal government spends an estimated $1.3 billion to house people in a loose network of local jails. These agencies—primarily the US Marshals and ICE—are directly under federal control.
All of this federal $$ has incentivized counties to BUILD BIG when they’re thinking about adding local jail space.

The wonderful Jack Norton @jcknorton calls this “an intercounty carceral arms race... to build and bigger and bigger jails.”
https://t.co/98s22r2fWL
As he point out in the piece, this was catalyze largely by “The Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984,” which I like to “the lesser know crime Bill ™️.” After passage, the no.
of people detained by the Marshals increased 32 percent in ONE YEAR.
The fact that so many people are now held for ICE in local jails—or at least that the contracts are in place to allow that—is a legacy of this bill. And you know who was was among the bill’s biggest champions? That’s right, one @POTUS Biden.
This system ties local revenue to the increased detention of asylum seekers, immigrants, and people detained on federal charges. That has political consequences: county budgets are tied to increased detention of Black, Brown and poor people.
(I just said “tied to” a lot, but you get the gist).

This is a terrible system all of the time. As @jcknorton found in Glades County, FL, it can create this whole new WEIRD system of private profits, going to investors who back big new jails.

https://t.co/EsTK4wd7EX
As COVID-19 spread, continued transfers through this detention empire have been CATASTROPHIC. As @keribla writes, reports began to pop up earlier this year about the Marshals transferring people with active COVID-19 infections
https://t.co/DuSz7HtEHp
According to reporting by @keegan_hamilton @ Vice, the BOP knew about “super spreader” jails holding for USMS. Yet absolutely nothing has been done to stop transfers.

https://t.co/35ggeNKe0E
This is a big, consequential facet of the justice system that the current administration has direct control over. If they’re serious about addressing spread of COVID-19 on both sides of the bars, addressing perverse $$ incentives, and advancing racial equity, look @ ICE and USMS
They have GOT to start taking these contracts offline. And if they’re trying to figure out where to start, one obvious place would be the MANY jails where people held for the feds have died of abuse and neglect, even PRIOR to COVID-19. Via @SethFW
https://t.co/qljBoNGHaa
The other obvious place are the many counties—and now states—where communities are already pushing their local governments to eliminate Federal contracts. Imagine how else A BILLION dollars could be invested in communities.
https://t.co/fc0Gv6plwr

More from Government

Abbott is pushing a lie to protect incompetence. There is no Federal oversight of the Texas Grid, ergo fewer regulations (sound familiar) - so point one: state legislature needs reform. 2/


2. Point 2: there were clear signs the grid would get overloaded under extreme cold conditions. Why? Due to a vacuum of regulations mandating winterization of turbines and power generators. This from sources, in Texas!

3. Point 3: Of the power shortfall that hit Texas, over 80% was due to problems at coal and gas fired plants. Power generators were just not winterized. Decisions to do so have been ignored since the 1990s.

4. Point 4: these are winterized wind turbines in Denmark. The ocean is frozen. The turbines are generating.


5. #Texas| the main issue is: catastrophic governance at the State level (no Federal oversight of the Texas grid) failing to allocate funding to winterise the Natural Gas, Coal and Wind Turbine elements that contribute to the grid. (~ 80/20

You May Also Like