Private prisons skew representation - And you thought gerrymandering was bad!

[Are_grits_groceries]

<snip>
Geo Group, of Boca Raton, Fla., the second-largest prison company, has built or expanded eight facilities this year in Georgia, Texas, Mississippi and other states, and it plans seven more expansions or new prisons by 2010. Last month, Geo Group was awarded a contract by Florida's Department of Management Services to design and build a 2,000-bed special-needs prison in that state. Cornell Cos., the nation's third-largest prison company, recently broke ground on a 1,250-bed private prison for men in Hudson, Colo.
<snip>
Well, the problem is that the census takes place in two years, and since 1990 prisoners have been counted in the census as residents of the place they're incarcerated in. The census, which apportions, among other things, representation for states in the House of Representatives based on how they come out of the census. An awful lot of people who don't get to vote are going to be swelling the numbers in whatever states those private prisons settle in.

So if your neighbor gets arrested and he's shipped off to, say, South Carolina, he's not eligible to vote, but he (all five-fifths of him) is counted as a resident of South Carolina for the purposes of the Census.

Which means, bluntly, that if enough people are incarcerated in a district, they can get their very own representative based on very few people who are eligible to vote.

Danny R. Young, a 53-year-old backhoe operator for Jones County in eastern Iowa, was elected to the Anamosa City Council with a total of two votes — both write-ins, from his wife and a neighbor.

Twenty one counties in the United States have at least 21% of their population in prison. In Crowley County, Colorado and West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, one-third of the population consists of prisoners imported from somewhere else.
<snip>

http://firedoglake.com/2008/11/21/who-profits-from-private-prisons/#more-34062

This is a new way to change things.

[malaise]

1. This new prison industry demands

serious scrutiny. It is madness. What frightens me even more is that they are controlled by Republican operatives. Now lets assume that they house more than a few dangerous killers. Is it possible that they can let some out to do their deeds when required?

[geckosfeet]

2. Or incarcerate someone for a short time - and they never come out. eom

[malaise]

8. Indeed

The truth is they are moving around imprisoned citizens the same way they moved around so called 'enemy combatants'.

[Are_grits_groceries]

3. I don't put anything past them.

They will probably hire Blackwater to train them while they are incarcerated.
It could all look like one of the prison gangs with new "skills."
They might make Aryan Nations and the rest look like amateurs.

[malaise]

7. Bingo n/t

[arcadian]

4. Look at Texas.

Fuct up.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

5. There are so many good reasons...

To end the private prison industry and end their industrialized hells on earth that I don't have enough coffee in the house to make, drink, then list them all. Because it would take a powerful amount of writin'.

[CreekDog]

6. I wouldn't live in most of those places unless I was forced

which explains a lot.

[remember2000forever]

9. YUP! Prisons R Us !

[Are_grits_groceries]

10. We build more prisons than schools.

Either put the money into education or you will have to put it into prisons.