Ecclesio.com Conversation on Money in Politics: Breaking the Chains Between Campaign Finance and Private Prisons

This week, May 18-22, Leslie Woods, Representative for Domestic Poverty and Environmental Issues in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Public Witness, is guest-hosting a conversation on money in politics on Ecclesio.com. A new article will be posted each day. Here is Emerson Hunger Fellow Nora Leccese's piece on the connection between money in politics and private prison profiteering. 

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“[The Abolition of private prisons] is a cornerstone of our collective work to put justice back into the so-called criminal justice system.” This bold statement made in 2003 by the 215^th General Assembly (2003) is still resonant over a decade later as the U.S. continues to invest heavily in private prisons. Despite documented human rights abuses and fiscal mismanagement, there are nearly twice the number of federal prisoners incarcerated in private facilities today as there were in 2001. The massive transfer of taxpayer dollars to the coffers of private prison operators has broken state budgets, torn families apart, and has failed to make our communities measurably more secure. Why, then, are we investing in for-profit prisons at unprecedented rates? Part of the answer lies in the substantial power and influence accrued to private prison operators by lavish campaign contributions and lobbying efforts. In order to renew our democracy and reform our criminal justice system, we must sever the link between campaign finance and the privatization of the prison industry.

Today, the U.S. incarcerates 2.1 million people at any given time; according to California Prison Focus, “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens.” Over the past 40 years, our prison population has grown exponentially due in part to a strict punitive measures enacted as part of the War on Drugs in the 1980’s which imposed mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. As social programs were systematically stripped and city infrastructure left to crumble, the forgotten residents of many inner cities faced intense scrutiny for rising crime rates and drug use. Although this social injustice can be traced back to historical disinvestment and the outcome of legacies of racism in communities of color, the state response was to criminalize the drug user.  As described by activist and intellectual Angela Davis, “We began to see the prison emerge as a major institution to address the problems that were produced by the deindustrialization, lack of jobs, less funding into education, lack of education, the closedown of systems that were designed to assist people who had mental and emotional problems.”

As a result of the crackdown on crime, prison populations and budgets began to swell in the early 1980’s and a faction of enterprising prison administrations saw an opportunity to privatize incarceration, thereby making it profitable. Their pitch was that the private sector could warehouse inmates at a fraction of the cost (this has since proved to be untrue in most cases) of public prisons, which was an appealing argument to cash and capacity-strapped states. Since that time, corporations have reaped huge profits from prison construction, management, and from the provision of subcontracted services to prisoners (food, health care, pay phones); the market for calls made from prison pay phones alone is estimated at $1 billion a year. Yet another source of profit is prison labor; a wide variety of companies—including such familiar ones as Victoria’s Secret, Dell, Motorola, and Microsoft—have taken advantage of the low cost, and armed supervision, of prison labor. The success of prison privatization was no mere accident; it was a bitter cocktail of conservative, tough-on-crime ideology and enterprising private prison barons who sought to cement the demand for their services in the rule of law.

Since 2000, the three largest private prison companies—CCA, GEO and Cornell Companiesi—have contributed $835,514 to federal candidates, including Senators and Members of the House of Representatives. Giving to state level politicians during the last five election cycles was much higher: $6,092,331. Data maintained by the National Institute on Money in State Politics also reveal the following about private prison campaign contributions: Between 2003 and 2011, CCA contributed to over 600 state candidates, and GEO contributed to over 400.  Both corporations have established their own Political Action Committees (PACs). These companies backed a high proportion of candidates who ultimately won elections, which may indicate a strategy of focusing contributions on candidates likely to wield power, not a comprehensive partisan agenda.

Examples of private prison contracts awarded in the wake of private-prison funded campaigns riddle the landscape of electoral politics, and are not corralled on one side of the aisle.

• Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) accepted at least $60,000 from people directly connected to the Corrections Corporation of America, and Arizona has lead the country in the expansion and privatization of detention centers for undocumented immigrants.

• An examination of campaign finance records shows that GEO Group gave over $11,000 in contributions directly to the campaigns of 14 of the 20 members of the Florida state Budget Committee that approved a massive prison privatization bill, by a vote of 14-4. Since 2006, GEO Group has spent a total of $1.3 million in campaign contributions in Florida alone and has been rewarded with hearty new contracts for prison healthcare.

• In 2014, Governor Jerry Brown (D) of California received $54,000 from GEO for his reelection campaign. As reported in Truthout, in April 2014, California subsequently contracted with GEO Group to open a 260-bed women’s prison. The contract allows GEO to double the number of beds, potentially increasing its four-year revenue from $38,132,640 to $66,394,276 in California.

The influence of corporate dollars is evident not only in allotment of federal and state contracts, but in the crafting of legislation itself.  One of the primary tools of the private prison sector is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which is a collection of about 2000 legislators and corporate leaders.  They meet once a year to draft model legislation intended for introduction in state houses around the country.

The ALEC yearly meeting, attended by Arizona lawmakers and CCA executives, produced the language for Arizona Senate Bill 1070 which required police to detain anyone suspected of being undocumented. Such detentions led to a swelling demand for detention centers, and a predictable call by Arizona legislators to build more detention facilities.

It is a sly relationship between politicians and corporate executives. Elected officials are careful not to exchange contracts for exact dollar amounts, only to align their platform with business priorities and create opportunities to expand the domain of prison privatization. As long as politicians privilege the demands of this industry over the needs of their own constituents there can be no justice in the United States. And without justice, there can be no peace.

Breaking the Chains on EAD Lobby Day 2015

Today, hundreds of Christians, including Presbyterians, will converge on Capitol Hill for meetings with the offices of their Senators and Representatives following PC(USA) Compassion, Peace and Justice Training Day and Ecumenical Advocacy Days. This is the culmination of an Advocacy Training Weekend of learning about mass incarceration and systems of exploitation through keynote speakers, workshops, training, worship, and discussion time.

 

During these meetings today, these Christian advocates will be addressing these two issues –

 

1.     Eliminating the Immigrant Detention Bed Quota (in effect since 2009), a federal budgetary mandate stating that “34,000 detention beds” must be filled at any given time. In order to fill the detention bed quota law enforcement targets immigrants and detains them in mostly private detention centers where human rights abuses run rampant.

  

2.     Ending Mandatory Minimum Sentencing. Mandatory minimum sentences are      excessive and contribute to significant racial disparities in the federal prison system.

 

Both of these problems have contributed significantly to the explosion of incarceration in the United States.

 

Join fellow advocates by urging your Senators and Representatives to pass make these important policy changes. Click here to write to your Members of Congress today!

Striking the Quota from Appropriations bills

 

In the House, Congressmen Deutch (D-FL) and Foster (D-IL) will introduce an amendment to strike the quota language in the Fiscal Year 2016 Appropriations bill. Ask your Representatives to vote in favor of this amendment and garner support for the elimination of the quota. Detaining people just to meet a quota and to pad the profits of private prison companies is not only unjust. It is bad policy.

 

Smarter Sentencing

 

To address mandatory minimum sentencing, urge your Senators and Representatives to support the Smarter Sentencing Act of 2015 (S. 502/H.R. 920), sponsored by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Representatives Raúl Labrador (R-ID) and Bobby Scott (D-VA), and the Justice Safety Valve Act of 2015 (S. 353/H.R. 706), sponsored by Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Patrick Leahy (R-VT) and Representatives Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Bobby Scott (D-VA).

 

The Smarter Sentencing Act would limit long mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, expand judicial discretion in cases involving the lowest level drug offenses, and reduce the federal prison population by retroactively implementing the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (a significant reduction in the sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine).

 

The Justice Safety Valve Act would restore judicial discretion in all federal criminal cases by allowing the broadest departure from mandatory minimum sentences.

 

Read a detailed description of the lobby day ask here.

 

What does the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) say about these issues?

 

In 1910 the General Assembly declared that the church ought to stand “For the development of a Christian spirit in the attitude of society toward offenders against the law. The Church holds that a Christian society must seek the reformation of offenders…” (Minutes, PCUSA, 1910, Part I, p. 232). 

 

In 1988, the 200^th General Assembly reaffirmed that “individual Presbyterians and the entities of the General Assembly . . . advocate a social order where compassion and justice characterize efforts toward those in the criminal justice system.”

 

In 2003, the 215^th General Assembly stated in a “Resolution Calling for the Abolition of For-Profit Private Prisons” that “the ultimate goal of the criminal justice system should be restorative justice, addressing the hurts and the needs of the victim, the offender, and community in such a way that all might be healed.” Moreover, it states, “Since the goal of for-profit prisons is earning a profit for their shareholders, there is a basic and fundamental conflict with the concept of rehabilitation as the ultimate goal of the prison system.”

 

Join fellow Christians in this the lobby day by contacting your Senators and Representatives today.

2015 Ecumenical Advocacy Days Lobby Day Ask

On Monday, April 20, hundreds of Ecumenical Advocacy Days participants from around the country will meet with the offices of their Senators and Representatives to address these justice issues, after a weekend of education and training on the issues of mass incarceration and systems of exploitation.

We call on Congress to reform federal criminal justice and immigrant detention policies toward the goal of ending unfair, unnecessary, costly and racially biased mass incarceration:

·       Adopt criminal justice and sentencing reform policies that incorporate an end to mandatory minimum sentencing;

·       Eliminate the detention bed quota for immigrant detention.

End Mandatory Minimum Sentencing

We urge Congress to support federal criminal justice reform legislation that would:

• Allow judges the discretion to fully consider the circumstances of individual cases to arrive at the most appropriate sentencing decision.

• Strike or reduce mandatory minimum sentences.

• Shrink the size of the federal prison system, particularly among people convicted of nonviolent and low-level offenses.

• Eliminate racial disparity and racial bias in sentencing.  

• Prioritize alternatives to incarceration for individuals who pose little threat to public safety, and ensure accountability without the use of excessive punishment.

• Overall, federal sentences are excessive given the level of culpability for the average federal prisoner. Half of the federal prison population was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison and 25% was sentenced to between 5 and 10 years in prison. Twenty-six percent of prisoners are serving sentences for violent offenses and about half are serving sentences for drug offenses. U.S. Sentencing Commission research indicates that nearly one-third of federal prisoners have little or no criminal history.

• Mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses have created significant racial disparities within the federal prison system. The U.S. Sentencing Commission has also found that Black and Hispanic defendants constitute the majority of people subject to mandatory minimum sentences and existing opportunities for relief from them are less often available to African American defendants. In 2011, the U.S. Sentencing Commission found black defendants were more likely to receive mandatory minimum penalties, in 60.6% of drug cases carrying such a penalty. Hispanic defendants were sentenced to a mandatory minimum in 41% of such cases and whites in 36.3%.

• Excessive sentencing practices, exacerbated by mandatory minimums, created an overcrowding crisis within the federal Bureau of Prisons. During fiscal year 2013, the federal prison system was 36% over its rated capacity. For high and medium security male facilities, capacity exceeded 50% and 45%, respectively. This overcrowding creates a dangerous environment for prisoners and staff because of an increase in misconduct caused by the strain of the deteriorating prison conditions. Prisoners now face triple or quadruple bunking in cells and many recreational areas have transitioned into dormitory space.

• Over three decades of unchecked growth in the federal prison population has burdened the federal criminal justice system and produced increasing costs that are unsustainable. In 1980 the federal prison population was approximately 25,000 and cost about $330 million. By fiscal year 2014 the population had grown to 216,000 people and received an appropriation from Congress of $6.874 billion. The per capita cost of incarcerating an individual in the federal system is $29,000 annually.

• At a time of significant government belt tightening the high cost of prison limits allocations for other important justice programs, like services for victims, crime prevention, and re-entry programs. The Bureau of Prisons consumes over 25% of the Department of Justice’s budget and this proportion will continue to grow if significant reforms designed to curtail growth and reduce the prison population are not enacted. 

• Passage of the Smarter Sentencing Act would advance several sentencing reform priorities of the faith community. The legislation’s provisions would limit the long mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, create an immediate reduction in the federal prison population due to the retroactive application of sentencing reforms passed under the Fair Sentencing Act in 2010 for crack cocaine offenses, and expand judicial discretion in cases involving the lowest level drug offenses.

• Passage of the Justice Safety Valve Act comes closest to realizing the sentencing goals of the faith community. The legislation would restore judicial discretion in all federal criminal cases by allowing the broadest departure from mandatory minimum sentences.

We support legislation like the Smarter Sentencing Act of 2015 (S. 502/H.R. 920), sponsored by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Representatives Raúl Labrador (R-ID) and Robert (Bobby) Scott (D-VA), and the Justice Safety Valve Act of 2015 (S. 353/H.R. 706), sponsored by Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Patrick Leahy (R-VT) and Representatives Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Bobby Scott (D-VA), as intermediate legislative approaches to advancing these recommendations.

Our Faith Conviction

As people of faith and conscience, we are deeply concerned for the many millions of men, women and children arrested, sentenced, incarcerated and returned home from incarceration throughout this country.  The federal criminal justice system should lead the nation in ensuring proportional and equitable accountability for our brothers and sisters entangled within the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, the federal justice system is far from a national model. Since 1980, the size of the federal prison population has increased nearly 800%. Approximately 210,000 people are confined in federal prisons; 12% are in facilities managed by for-profit corporations. Many federal prisons are dangerously overcrowded and rehabilitative programming and treatment opportunities are lacking.

Mandatory minimum penalties -- sentences prescribed by Congress -- have substantially contributed to the increase in the federal prison population over the last 30 years and must be addressed to stop the crisis. We concur with the bipartisan U.S. Sentencing Commission’s 2011 report on mandatory minimum penalties that states, “certain mandatory minimum provisions apply too broadly, are set too high, or both, to warrant the prescribed minimum penalty… This has led to inconsistencies in application of certain mandatory minimum penalties….”

Eliminate the Immigrant Detention Bed Quota

We urge Congress to eliminate the detention bed quota for Fiscal Year 2016.

In the House, Congressmen Deutch (D-FL) & Foster (D-IL) will introduce an amendment to strike the quota language in the appropriations bill.  We ask you to:

·       Vote in favor of this amendment.

·       Contact other offices to gain support for the elimination of the quota.

·      Express your opposition to the bed quote in public statements.

The United States has the largest immigration detention infrastructure in the world. The expansion of this system in recent years is partly due to the immigration detention bed quota, a policy passed by Congress under which 34,000 immigrants are held in ICE detention at any given time. This policy is unprecedented; no other law enforcement agency operates on a quota system. 

What is the bed quota?

·       Enacted by Congress: Congressional appropriations language in ICE’s budget states “[t]hat funding made available under this heading shall maintain a level of not less than 34,000 detention beds.”

·       Implemented as a quota: ICE interprets this language as a quota requiring the agency to lock-up an average of 34,000 people in immigration detention at any given time.

What is the bed quota’s impact?

·       Immigrants are held in facilities in which innumerable human rights abuses and dozens of deaths have occurred. Immigrants are often held with no access to outdoor space, served rotten food, and subjected to wholly inadequate medical and mental health care.  Most immigrants are held in facilities hundreds of miles from their families and without access to counsel.

·       The quota feeds into a larger system characterized by mass deportation and lack of due process.  It incentivizes targeting immigrants for deportation in order to fill jail cells.

·       It puts a price tag on immigrant lives. The policy leads Congress and ICE to treat immigrants as numbers to fill a quota, not as real people with children and loved ones who depend on them.

·       It costs ICE over $2 billion every year. Money appropriated for the bed quota helps line the pockets of for-profit prison corporations that run over half of all immigration jail beds. The two top private prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group, have a combined annual revenue of over $3 billion.

Our Faith Conviction

As people of faith we support alternatives to immigrant detention, which runs contrary to our values of basic dignity, due process, and human rights. Immigrants are often held with no access to outdoor space, served rotten food, and subjected to wholly inadequate medical and mental health care.  Detained families are seeking protection from sexual assault, trafficking, and violence. The bed quota is a particularly egregious element of the immigrant detention system.

Detention operates on a quota system that keeps 34,000 immigrants imprisoned each day.

·       Congress has directed ICE to maintain a daily quota of 34,000 detention beds and has made ICE’s funding contingent on doing so.

·       The requirement to fill the quota forces ICE to find immigrants to detain and to continue operating facilities with subpar conditions and track records of abuse.

·       No other law enforcement agency is forced to operate on a quota system. 

Detention is expensive – there is a human cost to our communities and a monetary cost to taxpayers.

·       The administration’s rampant detention and deportation policies mean that the families and communities of nearly half a million people are torn apart each year.

·       The most recent budget request for ICE’s Custody Operations is just over $2 billion. During a time of fiscal crisis, it is unacceptable to be spending billions of taxpayer dollars to needlessly detain immigrants. This is a complete waste of resources when other proven and effective methods—including parole, release under supervision, and bond—cost taxpayers far less than detention.

Private prison corporations lobby for policies like the bed quota which keep immigrants in detention.

·       Nearly 60% of detention beds are in facilities run by private prison corporations, which rake in profits from the incarceration of immigrants. 

Support Smarter Sentencing

The Smarter Sentencing Act (S.1410), sponsored by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Richard Durbin (D-IL), is an incremental approach to justice reform that would reduce harsh minimum mandatory sentences for low-level drug offenses, help increase fairness, reduce racial disparity, and limit overcrowding in the Bureau of Prisons.

In the PC(USA) we affirm God’s intention of shalom for each child of God and in restorative justice, which, simply put, is “addressing the hurts and the needs of the victim, the offender, and the community in such a way that all—victim, offender, and community—might be healed.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the Safer Sentencing Act on January 30, 2014, and it was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar on March 11.

Click here to email your Senators in support of the Smarter Sentencing Act.

The federal prison population has increased by 800% since 1980 and the introduction of overly punitive mandatory sentencing policies that targeted people convicted of drug offenses. Nearly half of those federal inmates are serving sentences for drug offenses, many of which are low-level and nonviolent. Today, the Bureau of Prisons is nearly 40 percent over capacity and consumes over 25 percent of the Department of Justice's budget.

Furthermore, the U.S. Sentencing Commission has testified before the Judiciary Committee that African-American and Latino defendants constitute the majority of people subject to mandatory minimum sentences. Opportunities for relief from these overly punitive sentences are rarely made available to defendants of color. Passage of the Smarter Sentencing Act would be an important first step toward restoring fairness in our justice system by limiting this existing racial disparity.

Take action now to support justice reform and smarter, fairer sentencing.

The Presbyterian Church has a long tradition of commitment to justice reform:

• In 1910 the General Assembly declared that the church ought to stand “For the development of a Christian spirit in the attitude of society toward offenders against the law.” (Minutes, PCUSA, 1910, Part I, p. 232). 
• The 215^th GA approved a Resolution Calling for the Abolition of For-Profit Prisons stating, “We believe that the ultimate goal of the criminal justice system should be ‘restorative justice.’” (Resolution on Restorative Justice, Minutes, 2002, Part I, p. 576).
• In 2004, the 214th General Assembly approved a Resolution on Restorative Justice. 
• In 2012, the 220^th GA encouraged Presbyterians to join in the call of US faith leaders to urge the president to sign, and the Senate to ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture in order to reduce risk of torture and abuse in U.S. prisons.
• In February 2014, Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson II, Director of the PC(USA) Office of Public Witness, joined thousands of Presbyterians, ministers, theologians, and lay people who marched to the state capital in North Carolina.  This Moral Monday march included a focus to end disparities based on class and race in the criminal justice system.