Bernie Sanders on private prisons: 'Justice is not for sale'

Today, the Democratic candidate will introduce a bill that, if passed, would eliminate for-profit prisons, expanding a national conversation on social justice, law enforcement, and prison reform. 

|
Jose Luis Magana/ AP
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks at a civil rights rally at Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. Sanders will introduce a bill to eliminate for-profit prisons, expanding a renewed national debate on social justice and prison reform.

On Thursday, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) of Vt. is set to introduce the “Justice Is Not For Sale” Act on Capitol Hill, which would ban a private prison industry he accuses of creating a “perverse incentive” to keep jails filled.

The bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Raul Manuel Grijalva (D) of Ariz., calls for federal, state, and local governments to ban privately run prisons within three years, to reduce high fees for prisoner services such as phone calls, and to reinstate a federal parole system, which was eliminated as part of ‘tough on crime’ efforts in the 1980s, The Washington Post reports. The bill also seeks to reduce the number of immigrants held in detention centers, many of which are privately-managed, by eliminating the current minimum quota of housing 34,000 people each day.

Calling the private prison industry “disgraceful,” and “morally repugnant,” Sanders’ campaign website says “the measure of success for law enforcement should not be how many people get locked up.” 

Private prisons, originally created to lower costs and reduce dangerous overcrowding in public facilities, now house 19 percent of federal prisoners, fueling a $5 billion industry that has quickly become a hot “recession resistant” investment.

Reform advocates allege that the industry, dominated by The GEO Group and the Corrections Corporation of America, reduces the motivation to rehabilitate prisoners because companies make a profit by keeping them imprisoned. 

A University of Wisconsin study released this spring found that private prison inmates often serve longer sentences, yet are just as likely to recidivate as those in public prisons. 

As researcher Anita Mukherjee highlighted, these longer sentences drive up private prisons’ costs, undermining claims that they save taxpayers money, which is ostensibly the industry’s core purpose. Other analyses have also cast doubt on their cost-saving ability, particularly since state contacts may have to guarantee a certain number of prisoners to their private providers. 

Calling to abolish the industry, Sanders says:

We need to end the tragic reality that the United States has more people in jail than any other country on earth, and that the people being incarcerated are disproportionately black and Hispanic. We need to take a hard look at why the rate of recidivism in this country is so high and why we are not developing successful paths back to civil society for those who serve prison time.

By adding a specific plan to the national conversation on law enforcement, racial bias, and prison reform, the bill may help Sanders make inroads with voting demographics he has struggled to reach as an Independent senator from a small, nearly entirely white state.

Campaigning in South Carolina beside intellectual and civil rights activist Cornel West last week, Sanders stressed investing in “jobs and education rather than jails and incarceration.” Hillary Clinton, who enjoys far more recognition and support from African-American voters, has also criticized mass incarceration, but has yet to propose a specific reform plan.

Meanwhile, an opinion piece in Al Jazeera reports that Republican candidates Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio have supported, or accepted support from, the private prison industry. 

Although a ban on private prisons would face an uphill battle in Congress, The Christian Science Monitor reports that other bipartisan prison reform bills are likely to pass this fall, as both parties recognize new research casting doubt on the assumption that tough sentencing laws result in lower crime rates.

Thanks to three-strike laws and minimum sentencing requirements instituted in the 1980s and 1990s, the prison population has more than quadrupled over the past few decades; more than 1 percent of Americans are now behind bars.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Bernie Sanders on private prisons: 'Justice is not for sale'
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/0917/Bernie-Sanders-on-private-prisons-Justice-is-not-for-sale
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe