Vermont senator hopes to end “private, for-profit prison racket."
Sen. Bernie Sanders said he hopes to end the “private, for-profit prison racket” with the introduction Thursday of bills to ban private prisons, reinstate the federal parole system and eliminate quotas for the number of immigrants held in detention.
The Vermont independent, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, introduced the “Justice is not for Sale Act” with Democratic Reps. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Bobby Rush of Illinois. It would bar the federal government from contracting with private incarceration companies starting two years after passage.
“The profit motivation of private companies running prisons works at cross purposes with the goals of criminal justice,” Sanders said. “Criminal justice and public safety are without a doubt the responsibility of the citizens of our country, not private corporations. They should be carried out by those who answer to voters, not those who answer to investors.”
Taxpayers pay $80 billion a year bill to incarcerate 2.3 million people, according to the lawmakers. Of the nearly 1.6 million people in federal and state prisons in 2013, 8.4 percent were in private facilities.
Ellison said the private-prison industry spends millions each year lobbying for harsher sentencing laws and immigration policies that serve its bottom line.
“Incarceration should be about rehabilitation and public safety, not profit,” he said.
The legislation would reinstate the federal parole system, abolished in 1984, and increase oversight of companies that provide banking and telephone services for inmates. It also would end the requirement that Immigration and Customs Enforcement maintain 34,000 detention beds.
Sanders said the bill represents only a piece of the major criminal justice reforms he believes are needed, but he’s convinced the issue can find bipartisan support.
“Making sure that corporations are not profiteering from the incarceration of fellow Americans is an important step forward.”
How the fuck you gonna say money doesn’t buy happiness when you live in a society that revolves around money and requires you to have it if you want to do the things you want to do? Without money you can only be happy so fucking much when you have bills coming at you from every direction and also have to worry about feeding your kids, clothing yourself, buying their school supplies every year, ect.
Y'all need to be a little more realistic when y'all say money doesn’t buy happiness, cause being financially stable and not having to worry about whether or not I’m gonna have money to feed my family today sure seems like it’ll make me happy.
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