LET'S GET BUSY!

Go to www.change.org
Click on View All Actions
Click on Browse by Cause
Click on Human Rights
Click on Stop Corrections Corporation of America
Private Prison in San Diego
View the poem Oppose & Abolish and sign petition.
Send to suggested officials and your friends…
This is Jim Moreno’s Prison Stopping Formula!

Mother Earth Scrapers Prepare Ground For CCA Border Patrol Prison

Greetings Artivists:
Seven Easy Steps To Stop A Prison
Step 1: Go to www.change.org
Step 2: Click on View All Actions.
Step 3: Click on Browse by Cause.
Step 4: Click on Human Rights
Step 5: Click on Stop Corrections Corporation of America Private Prison in San Diego.
Add your own comments, e.g., that you don’t want that prison here.
Decide what you’d rather have instead of a gulag in Otay Mesa (hospital,
school, college or university, a place for the homeless, a hospital, school,
and college for the homeless, etc.).
Step 6: Every Other Day do the same thing with Congressional Representives
Barbara Boxer (619) 239-3884, and Bob Filner, (619 422-5963.
Step 7: Once a week call 202 456-1414, the White House Switchboard, and
tell Barack Obama that you disagree with Alan Bersin’s policies and you want
him removed, e.g. 5,000 human beings have died trying to cross the desert
since Bersin’s 1994 Operation Gatekeeper was put in place. Government
policy makers who create policy that causes death are not part of American values.

First Visible Sign of CCA Presence in Otay Mesa
Problems With Private Prisons 
   
     Imagine going into Family Court, Superior Court, Civil Court
or Federal Court and you see the letters CCA underneath.  You
don’t know that CCA means Corrections Corporation of America.
You don’t know that in a major, influencing way a private prison
that needs 90% of it’s beds filled to cover costs and make a profit is part of your court system.  You don’t know that there have been $180 million
dollars in law suits against this prison corporation including employees
selling drugs to inmates, problems with controlling violence, poor
to no medical care, and wrongful death litigation among others.
     You don’t know that two judges in Pennsylvania are serving prison
sentences for accepting $2.8 million dollars in bribes from a prison
corporation that gave the judges money for giving minors longer
sentences in their private prison.
  Now imagine you don’t have a car and your court has been moved
outside the San Diego City limits so far away that you might miss
your court date and receive a prison sentence because you didn’t have
transportation and you weren’t able to find the court.  You also find
people reluctant to help you because you struggle with the language.
   All this works in favor of the company that runs the prison.  They
have to keep their prison 90 % full to cover costs and make a profit.
The company is Corrections Corporation of America.  The court is
the Immigration Court.  The charges are not criminal, they’re civil
so you are not even a criminal and you are being forced to run a
legal gauntlet leading to a company making a profit from your poverty
and suffering simply by not having proper documentation.
     The only thing missing from the Immigration Court/CCA sign on
this page is an insignia of a kangaroo.  Corrections Corporation of America
is bad news with a bad history. 
   
Twice the Machinery As In December 2009?

 We don’t want another prison in San Diego, especially a private one run by a corporation with a checkered history. The potential for abuse is manifold. Private prisons had such a bad record of prisoner abuse in the nineteenth century in the United States they were outlawed by the turn of the century.
A report released in December of 2003 by Philip Mattera and Mafruza Khan of Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First in Washington, DC and Stephen Nathan of Prison Privatisation Report International in London made the following conclusion
about privitization of prisons and Corrections Corporation of America:
As this report shows, in spite of these efforts to improve, CCA has not been a success even by its own standards. CCA continues to be plagued by many of the same kinds of operational deficiencies,scandals and mismanagement that characterized its performance during its early years. It is no surprise that the company acknowledges that, “The operation of correctional and detention facilities by private entities has not achieved complete acceptance by either governments or the public.
CCA’s record is a clear example of how the pursuit of profit stands in the way of carrying out a core public function such as corrections. It is time for the public to know that independentinvestigators have failed to find clear evidence that private prison management is superior in terms of quality,recidivism rates or cost. CCA has succeeded in staying in business for twodecades, but it has not succeeded in demonstrating that prison privatization is socially, economically or ethically acceptable.
Indeed, there have already been lawsuits against CCA in San Diego County, e.g., the litigation for medical negligence to Francisco Castaneda, who had his penis amputated and died several months later when pleas for cancer treatment were ignored by CCA and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.). And isn’t what happened to Mr. Castaneda a metaphor for the history of racism (slavery, Jim Crow, Prison-Industrial
Complex – see Ruth Gilmore and her book Golden Gulag) in this country and the emasculation of men of color? CCA also faced litigation from San Diego ACLU for triple-celling, a practice where two man cells are packed with a third man who then sleeps on a mat by the toilet. A bad practice for ethics but good for profits.
Read about it at the ACLU website, www.aclusandiego.org . Type in a search for Corrections Corporations of America. Bring some coffee; you’ll be reading for a while about neglect and abuse that seems to be policy.

Follow the Seven Simple Steps in the above and stop this same old plantation, new name exercise in exploiting people of color. As the great grandson of an immigrant, as a nation of immigrants, a private prison for immigrants is a step in the wrong direction and a slap in the face to any immigrant descendant, including you and me.
Jim Moreno, January 2010