So what's the big deal about a disturbance in a private prison in Indiana?
It was started by prisoners from Arizona...
From the article, courtesy Canada.com -
Correction Commissioner J. David Donahue said the riot began after a group of prisoners from Arizona took off their shirts in the prison’s recreation area to show staff they wouldn’t comply with orders. They had been told to keep them on.
{snip}
The prison, built in 2002, can house about 2,200. It currently has about 1,000 prisoners from Indiana and 630 from Arizona.
In March, Arizona and Indiana reached an agreement on housing up to 1,260 Arizona prisoners.Arizona Department of Corrections spokeswoman Katie Decker said at least some of the transferred prisoners had complained about being moved, a step that was necessary because of the state’s shortage of prison space.
"They’re obviously resentful because they had to leave the state," she said, adding it is too early to say whether the transfers played any role in the riot.
Decker said the prisoners sent to New Castle were "carefully picked" before being transferred and could have "no predisposition to violence."
A post-riot AP story about the stresses faced by transferred AZ prisoners is here.
The prison in Indiana is operated by by the Florida-based corporation GEO Group Inc.
The prisoner transfer to Indiana started in March.
From an Indianapolis Star article, dated March 13, 2007 (I would have referenced an AZ Rep article, but it was already pulled down from their website.):
If Indiana had too many empty prison cells, Arizona had too many crowded cells.
Katie Decker, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Corrections, said that state has about 36,000 people incarcerated, roughly 5,000 more than the system is designed to hold.
And Arizona's prison population is among the fastest-growing in the country, fueled in part by a surge in state residents. The state's prison population could grow by more than a third by the end of 2011, according to a report released last month by the nonprofit Pew Charitable Trusts.
The funny part? The state that these prisoners were transferred out of, Arizona, is one of the states that takes in prisoners from other states.
Arizona Department of Corrections' policy and info page for out of state transfers is here.
GEO Group Inc.'s press release from March about the contract for additional prisoners in the New Castle, IN prison is here.
My own commentary -
To the Arizona Legislature:
You want to write the laws that create inmates, you write the appropriations to pay for the facilities to house them.
No more private prisons; no more shipping inmates out of state, away from their friends and families. They may be prisoners, and most may deserve incarceration, but cutting them off from anything good in their lives is bound to tick off even prisoners that have been officially deemed to be "non-violent."
This is going to happen again.
Oh, and "incarceration for profit" is just plain immoral. It may be cheaper in the short-term, and it may generate profits for major corporate campaign contributors, but it destroys families and funnels tax revenue away from the state and into corporate pockets.
For those who may think that private prison companies are performing a public service out of the goodness of their hearts, read the March press release GEO Group linked above.
It has nine paragraphs and one numerical table; one paragraph is about the prisoner contract; eight paragraphs and the chart are about financial analysis and the impact of the contract on the company's profit margin.
Oh, and the press release is on the page titled "Investor Relations".
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