Comments on: The Prison-Industrial Complex, Texas Style

By: Martin Wisse

Martin Wisse — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:20:23 +0000

Real Christians, not prisoners.

By: Martin Wisse

Martin Wisse — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:20:06 +0000

Obviously Christian prisoners aren’t real prisoners, so no problem there.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:01:33 +0000

@11: If they were allowed non-Christian inmates, that would certainly be true; I’m less convinced that they will abuse their own, although it certainly could happen.

It’s not inconsistent with my theory, either. Profiting from someone else’s suffering might seem rather un-Christian in the sense in which that word was formerly used, but Christians have long demonstrated their capacity for hypocrisy when it was useful to them (either individually or collectively).

By: Ceri B.

Ceri B. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:55:21 +0000

The recent history of Christianist bloc action in the US military, particularly in the Air Force, is such as to suggest that an all-Christian prison will very shortly become a hellhole suitable for producing the next round of torture advisors.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:33:00 +0000

@9: I predict that somewhere behind that story there is a Jack Abramoff type laughing all the way to the bank. Born-again Christianity is a great source of money and gullibility, for those unscrupulous enough to take advantage of it. Especially in that part of the country.

When you combine the ability to skim off taxpayer money and the ability to skim off religious donations, it’s a great business opportunity. I expect the actual nuts-and-bolts construction and operation of the prison to be contracted out to closely held companies that are very profitably inefficient, but nobody pays attention because they’re too busy praying, or arguing about praying.

By: Zamfir

Zamfir — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:35:41 +0000

Joe koss, that doesn;t look very nefarious to me. Weird, but apparently well intended:

Robinson, himself an ex-con and prison minister, said he had been working for years on the idea of an all-Christian prison, and he had invested $1.3 million so far on construction plans and other expenses.

He said a lot of prisons have faith-based or Christian units, but he knows of none with an all-Christian staff.

“The staff, being all born-again believers, will see this as a mission,” he said.

“I want people to understand what it’s about. It’s about changing criminals into citizens.”

The prison would accept only men near the end of their sentences who volunteer to come into the prison and sign an agreement to participate.

They would work full time at private industries that operate inside the prison, get job training, and earn money.

By: joe koss

joe koss — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:42:19 +0000

In a similar tangental prison vain, I was in Tulsa, OK recently and stumbled upon this article, which I guess is just a natural progression of the current US religious-political-economic situation.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20091102_18_A1_WAKITA319539&archive=yes

And, of course, one of the biggest supporters of California’s three strike rule is the prison guard union…

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:21:43 +0000

The shocking thing about the Hardin story, for me, was the poverty of imagination – their idea of economic development was trying to attract a prison. That’s a lot of defeated, grey-tea cynicism right there.

By: TGGP

TGGP — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:39:57 +0000

Yglesias had a good post on the problem with bonds a little while back:
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/10/tax-expenditures-are-a-poor-way-of-subsidizing-infrastructure-investment.php

Tangentially related, Sasha Volokh on the political economy of prison outsourcing:
http://volokh.com/posts/chain_1173224886.shtml

By: Salient

Salient — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:58:28 +0000

[County Clerk Dianne] Florez complained that the inmates can count on three meals a day and a television to watch while they idle their time away. Not to mention that their rent and electricity bills get paid, while Pecos residents have to work every day to make ends meet.

… Wow.

By: Jim Harrison

Jim Harrison — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:51:05 +0000

As we’ve learned, if there aren’t enough inmates for a private prison, a little money to the right judges and there will be.

By: rageahol

rageahol — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:39:34 +0000

These are public health disasters, not waiting to happen, but in progress. Without adequate oversight, you’re just begging for a major infectious disease outbreak, either in the United States, or in the countries where the inmates of these prisons are eventually shipped back to.

three words:
Multidrug resistant tuberculosis

By: Ceri B.

Ceri B. — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:29:16 +0000

But of course building new prisons is a very safe sort of venture these days. When was the last time American incarceration rates went down much? How many prisons have been closed in recent decades for want of inmates, and how many are grossly overcrowded?

By: Ginger Yellow

Ginger Yellow — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:15:33 +0000

That was the thing that really stunned me about the Hardin situation. Not the fly-by-night operator or the corruption, but the whole concept of building a prison on spec. It just seems insane to build and finance such a thing without even having a contract lined up, let alone signed. I really want to know who buys the bonds that finance these things, because they must be seriously gullible people. Revenue bonds are risky enough at the best of times, but normally they’re for things like sewer systems for which there is clearly a genuine need, or stadia where there’s obvious demand.