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Private Prisons: A Reliable American Growth Industry

Robert... Thank you for the added comments. Your thoughts and ideas are well recvd by myself and others that long for some "proper" change in the way our country is being run.
The latest bad news I read was how our Congress allocated the funds to improve our Homeland Security program. Just more personal projects being funded rather than sending the money where it is needed. Shameful actions by our esteemed Congress.
Then today I read that Whirlpool is closing their Evansville, IN plant and moving the 1,100 jobs to Mexico by the middle of next year. How much longer will we be able to export jobs and still run our country.
Maybe CA has it right... lets have a State Wide Garage sale and maybe even resort back to the good old days of Bake sales so that we can all survive.
Enough of my rant... Enjoy your weekend!!! God Speed to you and your family...Howard

Private Prisons: A Reliable American Growth Industry

Robert... You present some excellent information and we are basically in agreement regarding not only the misuse of funds needed to operate the prison system but also the rip off due to price of equipment and other necessary items.
I have not seen the racial side of our judicial system but would bow to your experience and agree that much work is needed to right the wrongs that occur with respect to people of color.
I greatly appreciate your input... while my original idea will likely never be taken seriously, we both agree that the cost of running our prison system is out of control and needs to be drastically changed for the benefit of the general public and the prisoners.
I have to wonder what has to happen to have our elected officials take a hard look at the Judicial System and the Prison System?

As a father of 4 sons (now all grown) I have always been angered by the fact that in my area our law enforcement and court system has taken a "profit" approach to crimes. i.e. I have lived in this area for 19 years. In that time - the police have never arrested anyone for the offense of "buying liquor for a minor"..while there is a weekly list of young people arrested for "underage drinking". The fine for underage drinking is $500 per arrest. Hmmmmmm...consider the profit if they only make 1,000 arrests a year and then consider the profit if this is being done nation wide!!!
The same holds true for Drugs... There has never been an arrest in 19 years of any small, medium or large drug dealer... but at the same time there are weekly arrests made for possession of drugs. Just another way for the Judicial System to add HUGE sums of money to the coffers while endangering the lives of our young people. My respect for all forms of Law Enforcement and our Judicial System is currently extremely low.
Thanks for listening...Howard

Private Prisons: A Reliable American Growth Industry

Robert Mart...: Quote:
"But the idea of deporting American citizens to Soviet Russia is shameful." Nice defamatory statement but no real explanation as to why this would be so. I read recently where 70%-80% of IBM employees are from outside the US...what is so great about the jobs created by our prison system that we would want to keep them here at a higher cost??? Have your noticed how many items recently have a label on them that reads "Made in Mexico" or "Assembled in Mexico"?
So, Robert, if you don't like the idea of Russia here is another one. Lets export them to Mexico. The cost of building new prisons in Mexico would help to stimulate the Mexican economy. When the prisons are ready, the need for guards and caretakers would create a huge number of jobs and again stimulate the Mexican economy. These new jobs would then help to stem the flow of illegals into our country which in turn would create more jobs here for the prison system employees that lost their jobs to Mexico. Our crime rate in the southwestern US would decrease. We should be able to lower everyone's tax bills as we would be able to have the prisoners housed at much lower cost. Then if someone is released in the middle of the Winter, they wouldn't freeze to death. It seems to me that everyone just wants to look at the problems with our Judicial system rather than a way to solve the bigger problem of lowering the cost of housing prisoners... these are two very different issues and should not be lumped together. I will agree that our Judicial system is a mess and runs on the money they make for themselves...no argument from me with that one. I also agree that many of the people in prison should have never been there - but that is not the issue here.

Private Prisons: A Reliable American Growth Industry

Dialectical... I don't understand how you made the leap from my suggestion to house our prisoners in other countries to the "take them out and shoot them" concept? It may help for you to know that the State of CA spends more of the taxpayer money on Prisons than on higher Education. The cost of prisons in CA is roughly 11% of the State budget! The highest cost is borne by the working people of Michigan with a huge 20% of the State's budget going to support prisoners. In summary of my first posting: I am not here to judge whether every person that is sent to prison was fairly accused and convicted or if they will return to society as an improved person...but rather to suggest that the HUGE amounts of money we spend on prisons could be of much better used elsewhere to improve everyone's standard of living. Shipping the jobs overseas to save Billion$ of dollars every year seems to be a very prudent use of Taxpayer money.

Private Prisons: A Reliable American Growth Industry

Time to grow up people. It seems to me that none of the people posting here have ever personally known some of the types of people that end up in our prison system. Get to know a few of them and you will quickly understand why they are there! Your "feel sorry for them" attitudes will quickly change when they live next door to you.
I have long thought that an excellent alternative to building and maintaining more US prisons would be to sign an agreement with Russia - for use of their unused space in the Siberian prisons.
Seems to me that this would be good for both countrys... We could house our prisoners at a greatly reduced cost and Russia could improve their economy at the same time. They already have the prisons in Siberia...why not use them? We could set up this type of prisoner housing system with a large number of poorer countrys around the world. We send a huge number of our jobs overseas now to get it done cheaper...why not just send the jobs we have in the prison system to other countries?
Then we could use the huge amounts of money that we save to fund more worthwhile projects... cancer research, etc. Duh... too much thinking out side the box for the bleeding hearts.