Prison Industry Bribes Judges To Get Convicts

[cannon_fodder]

An article in the Economist shows an inverse relationship to prison spending in California and educational spending.  Nearing a perfect correlation money was taken fromk education to fund more prisons - pushing or pulling inmates into the industry.

Our incarceration rate as a nation is not effect or sustainable.  Socially or economically.

[patric]

Penny-wise but pound foolish:  Let Them Eat Nothing – No Lunch for Prisoners

A growing number of U.S. prisons are taking steps to shatter any illusion that the role of prisons is to rehabilitate rather than merely punish. Eliminating lunch on weekends is gaining ground. The New York Times recently reported that Texas prisons scrapped mid-day meals on Saturday and Sunday last April. Still available are "brunch" from 5 to 7 a.m. and dinner between 4 and 6:30 p.m. Then last month they chopped last meals for inmates scheduled for execution.

Texas is not alone in skirting American Correctional Association standards by reducing the number of meals served. Ohio, Arizona, Georgia and Indiana all operate their food services on reduced schedules. Georgia inmates go three days without lunch, Friday through Sunday.

Slashing food budgets may create other financial headaches. On October 11th, inmates in a privately operated Oklahoma prison rioted over the poor quality of food. Kentucky prisoners rioted in 2009 when they were served soup filled with worms and burritos containing human feces. That same year, inmates in a privately-run prison in Texas set fire to the facility to protest inadequate food and health care.

More Than Money at Stake

The practice of cutting meals or serving mediocre food seems like a simple budgetary issue, but the implications may be far reaching. A study of the impact of mild hunger on the decisions made by 8 Israeli judges showed they made harsher parole decisions before meal breaks. After analyzing more than 1,000 decisions made by eight experienced judges over a period of 50 days, the researchers found, "The proportion of favorable rulings fell from about 65 % to nearly zero during each session separated by the 2 food breaks, leaping back to 65 % immediately after the breaks. If judges are influenced by mild hunger, prisoners surely are too.

A study currently underway in the U.K. is testing the link between poor diet and violence in prison populations. It is based on the findings of 2002 study showing that prisoners receiving nutritional supplements committed fewer violent offenses. The lead researcher, Bernard Gesch, says the link between behavior and diet is not new. Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso saw a connection between terrorism and poor diet in 1892. Many other studies showing links between diet and behavior are analyzed in a report called, "Changing Diets, Changing Minds: how food affects mental health and behavior."
http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/2011/10/us-let-them-eat-nothing-no-lunch-for.html

[heironymouspasparagus]

Texas is kind of a special case - when you have a governor (Perry) who is presented clear and unambiguous evidence that a convict is innocent, goes ahead and executes him anyway...well, what can you expect?  Let them not eat lunch!!


Tulsa World had a little article about Fallin and her parole board today.  She picked the majority of these people on the board, presumably because she felt she could trust them.  And yet, she ignores and contradicts their recommendations about half the time.  So...why did she bother??

And she ends up costing us many millions extra per year by this action - the article said how many and I forgot.  

Couldn't tell from article if Brad Henry accepted their recommendations any better, but he left a bigger backlog.

[patric]

Illegal immigration and the "war" on drugs isnt keeping the for-profit prisons profitable, so they are importing prisoners from offshore:

Puerto Rican Inmates To Be Transferred To Cushing Prison
Associated Press

Puerto Rico will send as many as 480 male inmates to an Oklahoma prison under an agreement announced Tuesday with a U.S. corrections company.

A company press release says at least 240 inmates will be sent to the Cimarron prison in Cushing, Oklahoma, in February under a contract with Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). The remaining inmates will be sent there by midyear. The two-year contract can be renewed for two additional one-year terms.
Cimarron currently houses 650 inmates.
It is unclear how much the contract is worth, or how the inmates will be selected.
Spokespeople with Corrections Corporation of America and the Puerto Rico Corrections Department did not return calls for comment.