Private Prison Corp Makes Huge Profits from Arizona's Immigration Laws

[amborin]

Prison Lobbyists Working For AZ Gov. Brewer Are Set To Profit From Immigration Law She Signed

.....a new investigation by local Arizona TV news station CBS 5 finds that the Brewer administration may have ulterior motives for its strong support of the new law. The station has found that “two of Brewer’s top advisers have connections” to private prison giant Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).
Paul Senseman, Brewer’s deputy chief of staff, is a former lobbyist for CCA. His wife continues to lobby for the company. Meanwhile Chuck Coughlin, who leads her re-election campaign, chaired her transition into the governorship, and is one of the governor’s policy advisors, is president of HighGround Public Affairs Consultants, which lobbies for CCA.

This is important because CCA currently “holds the federal contract to house detainees in Arizona.” CBS 5 notes that the company currently bills $11 million a month to the state of Arizona and that, if SB-1070 is successfully implemented, its profits would be significantly padded as it would take responsibility for imprisoning immigrants arrested by Arizona police.

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http://thinkprogress.org/2010/07/26/prison-brewer/


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Profiting From Immigration Injustice


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As CCA expands in Pinal County, so does the bill to American taxpayers.

According to David Gonzalez, the U.S. marshal for Arizona, taxpayers pay from $9 million to $11 million a month to incarcerate immigrants at Eloy alone. To preserve the flow, CCA has cultivated high-level political connections on both sides of the aisle. Among its board of directors is former Democratic Sen. Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, a friend of Department of Homeland Security Director Napolitano and the former boss of U.S. Attorney Burke, who worked as a counsel at DeConcini’s law firm. (The courthouse where Streamline takes place is named for DeConcini’s father, Evo, who once was Arizona’s attorney general.) CCA’s lobbyists have become familiar faces in Congress and in statehouses across the country; the company spent $770,000 last year to ply lawmakers......

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truthdigg.org
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Arizona's Draconian Immigration Law Is Great ... For Our Prison-Industrial Complex

Discussion about "racial profiling" is missing the larger point: what about all the business Arizona's sick, racist law will bring to the copper state?

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CCA, one of the largest, has had a spectacular resurgence based in large part on changes in immigration policy. In a conference call with investors in 2008, John Ferguson, CEO of the firm, said he was optimistic that DHS's detention network would continue to expand. "We see that the budget supports the detention population of 33,000 inmate detainee beds," Ferguson said. "What I am most encouraged about is everything we are hearing says 33,000 is still not enough."

According to "The Business of Detention," by Stokely Baksh and Renee Feltz, five of CCA's "lucrative contracts to detain immigrants have no end date. Several of its other contracts contain 'take or pay' clauses that guarantee a certain amount of revenue regardless of occupancy rates, as well as periodic rate increases. All of the contracts are renewed at a rate of almost 95 percent."

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http://www.alternet.org/story/146640/arizona's_draconian_immigration_law_is_great_..._for_our_prison-industrial_complex?page=entire

[dkf]

1. Illegal immigrants are a boon to prisons period as they are 20% of the prison

Population before enforcement of immigration laws.

These are the people in prison for the normal stuff like theft drugs and murder.

[Hannah Bell]

2. republicans/the rich: all about sucking off that state teat.