The Rot We Refuse to Name: Montgomery, Alabama, and the Living Legacy of Racial Terror, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D., August 3, 2026

The Rot We Refuse to Name: Montgomery, Alabama, and the Living Legacy of Racial Terror

by

Angela Valenzuela

August 3, 2026

Legacy Museum link

Last week, during a weeklong stay in Montgomery, Alabama as part of the Legacy Summit hosted by the the African American Policy Forum (AAPF), I visited the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum—an experience that unsettled me in ways I am still trying to process. I am deeply grateful to Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw and for everyone at the AAPF—as well as to American Association of University Professors and the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, for making the visit possible for me and so many others.

Inside the museum, the history of racial terror ceased to feel like a distant past. It became immediate and embodied: a history carried in names, voices, stories, images, places, and lives, and one whose consequences remain painfully present. I encourage all to consider this opportunity next Summer or alternatively, to take some time off yourself to visit the various sites in Montgomery to get a complete experience.

While there, you must also visit the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the Freedom Monument and Sculpture Park, and Montgomery Square. Together, these places illuminate the extraordinary decade of struggle that helped transform the United States and, without exaggeration, changed the world. They also remind us that the rights secured through that struggle are neither permanent nor self-sustaining. They are now being challenged by forces of religious nationalism that seek to reverse many of the democratic gains for which earlier generations sacrificed so much.

The museum itself stands on the sacred grounds of a former cotton warehouse where enslaved Black people were once held and forced to labor. From that location, it traces a historical continuum linking the transatlantic slave trade and enslavement to the violent overthrow of Reconstruction, racial terror lynching, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, and the contemporary criminal legal system. Personal testimony, archival evidence, art, and data reveal not a succession of unrelated injustices, but the recurring adaptation of racial domination as older systems were challenged and new ones took their place.

What struck me most forcefully was the depth and pervasiveness of the terror that Black people throughout the South endured. Terror was not limited to the moment when a person was seized, tortured, or killed. It was directed at entire communities. It instructed Black parents about what could happen to their children. It warned Black veterans against wearing their uniforms with pride. It threatened Black citizens who attempted to vote, acquire land, build businesses, organize workers, attend better schools, or insist upon being addressed with dignity.

Lynching was not simply spontaneous mob violence committed by a few extremists. It was a system of public terrorism intended to restore white supremacy after emancipation and suppress Black civil and political rights. The Equal Justice Initiative has documented at least 2,000 Black women, men, and children killed in racial terror lynchings during Reconstruction and more than 4,400 racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950. These acts were often committed publicly and with impunity, sometimes before crowds that included community leaders, elected officials, and children.

#JusticeForJamesCooper

I pause here to acknowledge James Cooper, whose body was found hanging from a utility pole in Metcalfe, Mississippi. Jay Fletcher first reported on the unresolved questions surrounding Cooper’s death in 2024 with the Delta Democrat-Times revisiting the case two years later (Fletcher, 2024, 2026). Kim Dockery (2026) has also drawn renewed attention to the case and the family’s continuing demand for answers. Although local authorities ruled Cooper’s death a suicide, his family and members of the community dispute that conclusion and are calling for a federal investigation.

Cooper’s story reminds us why the thousands documented by the Equal Justice Initiative cannot remain an abstraction. Each number represents a person with a name, a life, relationships, aspirations, and a community forced to live with the terror and injustice surrounding that person’s death. Naming him here is one small act of refusing the erasure upon which racial terror has long depended.

The museum makes clear that the targets of this violence were not only the people who were murdered. Terror entered homes, churches, schools, workplaces, and everyday relationships. It constrained movement, speech, aspiration, and political participation. It produced forced migration as Black families fled communities where the threat of violence had become unbearable. It also taught white communities that violence against Black people would be tolerated, celebrated, or ignored. Geez, isn't this what's getting "taught" anew with each unresolved case today like James Cooper's?

This is what makes the history so difficult to absorb. The cruelty was not incidental to the social order. It helped create and maintain that order.

Emancipation formally ended enslavement, but it did not eliminate the ideology that had justified it. The mythology of Black inferiority was transformed into new presumptions: that Black people were dangerous, criminal, incapable of citizenship, or naturally suited for subordination. During Reconstruction, violence sought to destroy emerging Black political power. After Reconstruction, lynching and Jim Crow enforced segregation and racial hierarchy. As the museum demonstrates, these narratives did not disappear with the end of legally mandated segregation. They became embedded in policing, prosecution, sentencing, imprisonment, and capital punishment.

After getting back to the hotel, I reached out to my husband, Emilio Zamora, professor emeritus of history at the University of Texas at Austin, to share the anger and sorrow I felt as I confronted this sustained history of racial terror and injustice. His response was that it represents the “rot” of this country. 

The word stayed with me.

By “rot,” he did not mean only a shameful chapter in an otherwise unblemished national history. He meant something deeper: a foundational moral and institutional decay that has been repeatedly covered over without being removed. The legal forms have changed, but the underlying presumption of Black guilt, dangerousness, and disposability has remained disturbingly resilient. 

Although this system is rooted most fundamentally in anti-Blackness, its logics have extended outward, shaping the criminalization and punishment of Latino men, immigrants, Indigenous people, and other racialized communities. Through policing, immigration enforcement, detention, incarceration, and unequal sentencing, these groups have also been cast as dangerous, foreign, or undeserving of full protection under the law. Recognizing these connections should not blur the distinct history of Black oppression; rather, it reveals how institutions built through anti-Black racial domination have generated broader systems of surveillance, exclusion, and punishment.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, at year-end in 2023, 1,862 Black males per 100,000 Black male U.S. residents were serving sentences of more than one year under state or federal correctional jurisdiction—more than five times the corresponding rate for white males, 341 per 100,000 (Mueller & Kluckow, 2025). 

See Table 13 in Mueller & Kluckow (2025).

The Equal Justice Initiative aptly describes the modern death penalty as a direct descendant of racial terror lynching and links the terror era to racially biased capital punishment, excessive sentencing, wrongful convictions, and the continuing presumption of Black criminality.

This does not mean that lynching and imprisonment are identical. It means that institutions of punishment developed within a society that had never fully repudiated the racial assumptions underlying enslavement and racial terror. Black men who were once portrayed as threats requiring mob violence have continued to be treated as presumptively dangerous within schools, courts, prisons, and systems of capital punishment. The rope, the electric chair, the execution chamber, and the prison cell belong to different historical moments, but the Legacy Museum compels us to examine the ideas about race, guilt, innocence, and human worth that connect them.

Montgomery also reminded us that terror and resistance have always existed alongside one another. Black people did not merely endure this history. They built families, churches, schools, businesses, civic organizations, freedom movements, and cultures of extraordinary beauty and intellectual depth. They organized against slavery, challenged lynching, fought segregation, registered voters, contested wrongful convictions, and continued to demand that the nation honor principles it repeatedly denied them.

That resistance, however, should never be used to soften our understanding of the terror they endured and endure. Celebrating Black resilience without confronting the conditions that made such resilience necessary can become another way of avoiding the truth. The moral burden belongs not to those who survived oppression, but to the institutions and communities that produced it, benefited from it, tolerated it, or refused to remember it.

I left the Legacy Museum with a clearer understanding that racial injustice cannot be overcome through commemoration alone. Museums and memorials matter because they interrupt national amnesia. They restore names, lives, and histories that official narratives have—have long suppressed—and, in many cases, continue to suppress. So remembrance must also change how we understand contemporary policy and practice. It must shape how we approach policing, incarceration, sentencing, voting rights, education, housing, and the death penalty.

The rot persists whenever racial inequality is treated as accidental, whenever Black suffering is explained without reference to history, and whenever institutions celebrate true heroes like the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King or civil rights victories while continuously, if hypocritically, reproducing the conditions those movements opposed.

Our week in Montgomery left me grieving, but it also left me more convinced of the necessity of truth-telling. We cannot repair what we refuse to name. We cannot understand mass incarceration without understanding enslavement, Reconstruction, lynching, and Jim Crow. And we cannot claim to oppose racial terror while accepting institutions that continue to treat Black lives, and especially the lives of Black men, as inherently suspect or expendable.

The Legacy Museum asks the nation to do more than remember. It asks us to confront the rot—to expose it, remove it, and build institutions no longer dependent upon the degradation, terror, and punishment of Black people. To this, I will only add that it was a validating experience in terms of the policy battles we are fighting and have fought in coalition as Latinas and Latinos with the Black community.

Reference

Dockery, K. [@thicknpretty215]. (2026, August 3). James Cooper’s family continues to seek answers concerning his death in Metcalfe, Mississippi, and is calling for a federal investigation [Video]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/DbeCtzFB1nA/

Fletcher, J. (2024, May 8). Update on the James Cooper case. Delta Democrat-Times. https://www.ddtonline.com/crime-communities-local-content/update-james-cooper-case

Fletcher, J. (2026, August 3). One year later seeking justice for James. Delta Democrat-Times. https://www.ddtonline.com/communities-crime-local-content/one-year-later-seeking-justice-james

Mueller, D., & Kluckow, R. (2025). Prisoners in 2023—Statistical tables (NCJ 310197). U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/p23st.pdf

Did you know that the U.S. has 2.3 million people behind bars?

Did you know that the U.S. has 2.3 million people behind bars?  Per capita, this is more than any other country in the world.  How tragic and traumatizing to the millions of families directly affected by this.  ICE alone accounts for 43,000 of these.  We as a polity need to work together to address this crisis. To get educated on these matters, PrisonPolicy.org is a good place to start.

-Angela

Data Source: For information about the data visit the data section of the report. (Graph: Peter Wagner & Wendy Sawyer, 2018)

This graph originally appeared in Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2018.

Pie chart showing the number of people locked up on a given day in the United States by facility type and the underlying offense using the newest data available in March 2018.

The United States locks up more people, per capita, than any other nation. But grappling with why requires us to first consider the many types of correctional facilities and the reasons that 2.3 million people are confined there.

Trump's Forced Expulsion Constitutes as a Crime Against Humanity

Donald J. Trump's proposed removal of 3 million undocumented immigrants would have to constitute as a crime against humanity.  Practice Relating to Rule 129. The Act of Displacement

The number that Trump used in the 60 Minutes program today is a Pinocchio number.  Being deported and coming back into the country is a federal crime.  Illegal entry into the country is a misdemeanor.  Re-entry after being deported is a felony.

The total number of undocumented immigrants in the United States is 11.4 million.  3 million out of 11.4 million is 26% or 1/4 of the total undocumented population in the United States.

Hispanics account for 50 % of new federal prison populations.  The breakdown for federal Hispanic incarceration in 1991 was 60% for drugs and 20% for immigration causes.  By 2007, the numbers were reversed, 60% for immigration offenses and 20% for drug offenses.

Mass deportations of people are generally treated as crimes against humanity.  3 million persons is a large number.  In 1933 through 1944 Germany, the Germans Nazis transported millions of persons to over 40,000 concentration camps, included in these number are the 6 million Jews who were eventually executed by the Third Reich.

Most of us have a vivid memory of Jews being loaded onto freight trains as they were moved out to these concentration camps.  100 persons to each train.

It would take 30,000 train cars to deport 3 million undocumented immigrants.  It would take 120,000 freight cars to displace, forcibly move, 11 million undocumented immigrants.

Nationally, Whites make up 64% of the US population and account for 39% of the incarcerated population, Hispanics, are 16% of the US population and 17% of the incarcerated population and Blacks account for 13% of the US population and 40% of the incarcerated population.  In 2013 the total number of incarcerated persons in the US was 2,220,300 and the number on parole or supervised probation numbered 4,751,400.

"Hispanics represented nearly one-in-three (31%) inmates incarcerated in federal prisons in 2007, a greater share than whites (28%) but a smaller share than blacks (37%) (Bureau of Justice Statistics Program). This stands in sharp contrast to the ethnic and racial makeup of state prisons and local jails, where more than nine-in-ten (91%) of the 2.3 million inmates in this country are held. Among inmates held in state prisons, 19% were Hispanic, 36% were white and 39% were black in 2005 (West and Sabol, 2008). Among inmates held in local jails, 16% were Hispanic, 43% were white and 39% were black in 2007 (Pastore and Maguire, 2009)."

 

Source: PEW - A Rising Share: Hispanics and Federal Crime

Ice currently holds 41,000 undocumented immigrants.

From the numbers above, you can get an understanding of where the Trump Gestapo is going to pick up the first few hundred thousand undocumented immigrants to deport, i.e., displace.  Here they are going to have to wait a few years for these persons to be released.  So where will the Trump Gestapo find the other 2,700,000 "criminal" undocumented persons to deport or possible incarcerate?

The Trump Gestapo will go house by house, workplace by workplace, bars, restaurants, farm fields, barrios identifying each of the remaining 2,700,000 of them.

Like in Nazi Germany, today the Trump Gestapo comes for 3 million undocumented immigrants, tomorrow it comes for the remaining 8 million.  The day after, its comes for the 4 million natural born citizens of undocumented families.

Forced displacement, that is, expulsion, of 15 million undocumented immigrants and their natural born children is about where Nazi Germany got to in 1942 Europe.  You know the rest of the story.  We do not need another Holocaust Museum.

 

 

Author:  Voice of the Mainland, a LULAC Leader from Texas.  The League of United Latin American Citizens is the oldest and largest Latino civil rights in the U.S.  

Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons' Monitoring of Contract Prisons, August, 2016

Very informative report. -Angela

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

 Introduction  

The Federal  Bureau of Prisons ( BOP ), which is  the component of the  Department of Justice (Department) responsible for  incarcerating  all federal  defendants sentenced to prison,  was operating  at 20 percent over its rated capacity  as of December 2015.  To help alleviate overcrowding and respond to congressional  mandates , in 1997 the BOP had begun contracting with privately operated  institutions ( often referred to as “contract prisons ”) , at first on a smaller scale and  later more extensively,  to confine federal  inmates who are primarily low security,  criminal alien adult males with 90 months or less remaining to serve on their  sentences.  As of December  2015 , contract prisons house d roughly  22, 660  of these  federal inmates , or about  12 percent of the BOP’s total inmate population . These contract  prisons were  operated by  three  private corporations: Corrections  Corporation of America; GEO Group, Inc.; and Management and Training  Corporation.

The BOP’s  annual  expenditures on contract prisons increased from  approximately $562  million in  fiscal year (FY) 2011 to $639 million in FY 2014.  In  recent years, disturbances  in several federal  contract pri sons  resulted in extensive  property damage, bodily injury, and the death of a Correctional Officer.  

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG ) initiated this review to examine  how the BOP monitors  these facilities. We  also assessed whether contractor  performance meets certain inmate safety and security requirements  and  analyzed  how contract prisons and similar BOP institutions compare with regard to inmate  safety and security data.  We found that, in most key areas, contract prisons  incurred more safety and security incidents per capita than comparable BOP  institutions and that the BOP needs to improve how it  monitors contract prisons  in  several areas . Throughout this report, we note several important corrective actions the BOP has taken,  in response to findings and recommendations in our April 2015  audit of the Reeves County contract prison, to improve its monitoring of contract  prisons , including in the areas of health and correctional services.

The BOP’s administration, monitoring, and oversight of contract pri sons  is  conducted through  three branches at BOP headquarters and  on site . According to the BOP, at each contract prison, two BOP  onsite  monitors and a  BOP  Contracting  Officer , in cooperation with other  BOP subject matter experts , oversee each  contractor’s compliance with 29  vital  functions  within 8 operational areas , including  correctional programs , correctional services , and  health services .

Continue reading here [PDF].

Nationality trumps race in sentencing gapImmigrants Face Far Harsher Punishments In U.S. Courts, Study Finds.

This is severe.  -Angela

Nationality trumps race in sentencing gap.  Immigrants Face Far Harsher Punishments In U.S. Courts, Study Finds.

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View photo

(Getty images)

Study after study has shown that black men do more time in jail than white men who commit similar crimes — an entrenched racial disparity in the nation’s justice system that Attorney General Eric Holder has decried as “shameful” and unacceptable.

But a new study finds that a previously ignored factor has an even larger impact than race on whether and for how long a person will go to jail: U.S. citizenship.

Immigrants who lack citizenship are four times more likely to be sent to jail than U.S. citizens who committed the same crimes, according to a study of federal sentencing data to be published in the American Sociological Review this month. Once they’re in jail, immigrants serve two to four months longer than the average citizen convicted of the same crime.

This sentencing gap between citizens and noncitizens is even larger than ones found between black defendants and white defendants, according to Michael T. Light, the study’s author and an assistant professor of sociology at Purdue University. Lacking citizenship appears to be worse news for a defendant than his or her race. A white noncitizen faces more jail time, on average, than a black U.S. citizen convicted of the same crime, the study found. 

Citizenship “appears to trump race and ethnicity when determining punishments for those who violate U.S. law,” the study concludes. The effect was starkest for undocumented immigrants, but even legal immigrants faced significantly longer sentences than citizens convicted of the same crimes, regardless of their race. Most of the sentencing disparity between Hispanics and whites could be explained by the higher percentage of noncitizens in the Hispanic group, the study found.

The sentencing gap appears to have grown with the size of the noncitizen population of the country, which has expanded to about 38 million people. Noncitizens make up more than a quarter of the country’s federal inmates. They are generally deported once their sentence is up. Most noncitizens in prison are serving time for federal immigration crimes, but the researchers examined only non-immigration offenses committed by noncitizens to be able to compare them to the same crimes committed by citizens.

It’s unclear why noncitizens are punished more severely by the courts. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that undocumented immigrants have a right to due process — and legal immigrants should be treated the same by the law. Light theorizes that the disparity might be a reflection of public opinion. A majority of Americans say in polls that they believe immigrants are likely to cause higher crime rates. This perception of higher criminality could result in harsher punishments.

Holder has called racial disparities in sentencing "unacceptable" and has launched a series of reforms aimed at rolling back mandatory minimums for drug crimes in order to combat them. It’s unclear if these reforms would help close the citizen-noncitizen gap as well, Light said.

“Any policy aimed at avoiding unwarranted disparities is a good thing,” he said. “It’s not that we shouldn’t focus on race and ethnicity, but that we should also include nationality.”

ACLU Report Blasts Private Prisons

Check out the full report: Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration.

Here's the Executive Summary:

The imprisonment of human beings at record levels is both a moral failure and an economic one — especially at a time when more and more Americans are struggling to make ends meet and when state governments confront enormous fiscal crises. This report finds, however, that mass incarceration provides a gigantic windfall for one special interest group — the private prison industry — even as current incarceration levels harm the country as a whole. While the nation's unprecedented rate of imprisonment deprives individuals of freedom, wrests loved ones from their families, and drains the resources of governments, communities, and taxpayers, the private prison industry reaps lucrative rewards. As the public good suffers from mass incarceration, private prison companies obtain more and more government dollars, and private prison executives at the leading companies rake in enormous compensation packages, in some cases totaling millions of dollars.

The Spoils of Mass Incarceration
The United States imprisons more people — both per capita and in absolute terms — than any other nation in the world, including Russia, China, and Iran. Over the past four decades, imprisonment in the United States has increased explosively, spurred by criminal laws that impose steep sentences and curtail the opportunity to earn probation and parole. The current incarceration rate deprives record numbers of individuals of their liberty, disproportionately affects people of color, and has at best a minimal effect on public safety. Meanwhile, the crippling cost of imprisoning increasing numbers of Americans saddles government budgets with rising debt and exacerbates the current fiscal crises confronting states across the nation.

Leading private prison companies essentially admit that their business model depends on high rates of incarceration. For example, in a 2010 Annual Report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company, stated: "The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by . . . leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices . . . ."

As incarceration rates skyrocket, the private prison industry expands at exponential rates, holding ever more people in its prisons and jails, and generating massive profits. Private prisons for adults were virtually non-existent until the early 1980s, but the number of prisoners in private prisons increased by approximately 1600% between 1990 and 2009. Today, for-profit companies are responsible for approximately 6% of state prisoners, 16% of federal prisoners, and, according to one report, nearly half of all immigrants detained by the federal government. In 2010, the two largest private prison companies alone received nearly $3 billion dollars in revenue, and their top executives, according to one source, each received annual compensation packages worth well over $3 million.

A Danger to State Finances
While supporters of privatization tout the idea that governments can save money through private facilities, the evidence for supposed cost savings is mixed at best. As state governments across the nation confront deep fiscal deficits, the assertion that private prisons demonstrably reduce the costs of incarceration can be dangerous and irresponsible. Such claims may lure states into building private prisons or privatizing existing ones rather than reducing incarceration rates and limiting corrections spending through serious criminal justice reform.

This year, advocates of for-profit prisons trotted out privatization schemes as a supposed answer to budgetary woes in numerous states:

Arizona has announced plans to award 5,000 additional prison beds to private contractors, despite a recent statement by the Arizona Auditor General that for-profit imprisonment in Arizona may cost more than incarceration in publicly-operated facilities. Arizona's Department of Corrections is the only large agency in that state not subject to a budget cut in fiscal year 2012 — in fact, the Department's budget increased by $10 million. According to a news report, private prison employees and corporate officers contributed money to Governor Jan Brewer's reelection campaign, and high ranking Brewer Administration officials previously worked as private prison lobbyists.
Florida has responded to exploding incarceration costs largely through increasing reliance on private prisons. Although the assertion that private prisons save taxpayer money is highly questionable, supporters of privatization, according to a recent news report, claim that privatization in Florida is necessary to rein in the prison system's budget, which stood at $2.3 billion in 2010. A recent editorial in the Orlando Sentinel expressed the view that privatization "has eclipsed and shelved potentially more fruitful, cost-effective changes. One of them is sentencing reform." On September 30, 2011, a Florida court enjoined the Department of Corrections from implementing the privatization of prisons in 18 counties, finding that the planned privatization failed to comply with procedures mandated by state law. The court stated, "[t]he decision to issue only one [request for proposal] and only one contract for all 29 prison facilities [subject to proposed privatization] was based on convenience and speed, … rather than on any demonstrated savings or benefit advantage."
Ohio recently announced that it will become, on December 31, 2011, the first state in the nation to sell a publicly operated prison, Lake Erie Correctional Facility, to a private company, CCA. Notably, the head of Ohio's corrections department had served as a managing director of CCA. The claim that prison privatization demonstrably reduces costs and trims government budgets may detract from the critical work of reducing the state's prison population.
Louisiana narrowly defeated a proposal, pushed by Governor Bobby Jindal in a desperate attempt to generate short-term revenue, to sell off three state prisons to private companies. The Louisiana House Appropriations Committee blocked the bill by a vote of 13-12, with legislators expressing deep concern about the wisdom of selling off the state's assets.
The federal government is in the midst of a private prison expansion spree, driven primarily by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency that locks up roughly 400,000 immigrants each year and spends over $1.9 billion annually on custody operations. ICE now intends to create a new network of massive immigration detention centers, managed largely by private companies, in states including New Jersey, Texas, Florida, California and Illinois. According to a news report, in August 2011, ICE's plans to send 1,250 immigration detainees to Essex County, New Jersey threatened to unravel amid allegations that a private prison company seeking the contract, whose executives enjoyed close ties to Governor Chris Christie, received "special treatment" from the county. The fiscal crisis confronting the federal government, however, has done nothing to dampen Washington's spending binge on privatized immigration detention.

Atrocious Conditions
While evidence is mixed, certain empirical studies show a heightened level of violence against prisoners in private institutions. This may reflect in part the higher rate of staff turnover in private prisons, which can result in inexperienced guards walking the tiers. After an infamous escape from an Arizona private prison in 2010, for example, the Arizona Department of Corrections reported that at the prison, "[s]taff are fairly 'green' across all shifts," "are not proficient with weapons," and habitually ignore sounding alarms. Private facilities have also been linked to atrocious conditions. In a juvenile facility in Texas, for example, auditors reported, "[c]ells were filthy, smelled of feces and urine."

Just three weeks before the release of this report, prisoner fights in several locations throughout a private prison in Oklahoma left 46 prisoners injured and required 16 inmates to be sent to the hospital, some of them in critical condition. The risks to safety confronting inmates in private prisons are especially relevant at present, as the U.S. Supreme Court considers a case that could, depending on the outcome, prevent federal prisoners in private institutions from seeking compensation for constitutional violations — including deliberate indifference to prisoners' physical well being.

Shrewd Tactics
Certain private prison companies employ shrewd tactics to obtain more and more government contracts to incarcerate prisoners. In February 2011, for example, a jury convicted former Luzerene County, Pennsylvania Judge Mark Ciavarella of racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy in connection with payments received from a private prison developer. Tactics employed by some private prison companies, or individuals associated with the private prison industry, to gain influence or acquire more contracts or inmates include: use of questionable financial incentives; benefitting from the "revolving door" between public and private corrections; extensive lobbying; lavish campaign contributions; and efforts to control information.

* * * *

Part One of this Report traces the rise of the for-profit prison industry over the past 30 years, demonstrating that private prisons reaped lucrative spoils as incarceration rates reached historic levels. Part Two focuses on the supposed benefits associated with private prisons, showing that the view that private prison companies provide demonstrable economic benefits and humane facilities is debatable at best. Part Three discusses the tactics private prison companies have used to obtain control of more and more human beings and taxpayer dollars.

The time to halt the expansion of for-profit incarceration is now. The evidence that private prisons provide savings compared to publicly operated facilities is highly questionable, and certain studies point to worse conditions in for-profit facilities. The private prison industry helped to create the mass incarceration crisis and feeds off of this social ill. Private prisons cannot be part of the solution — economic or ethical — to the problem of mass incarceration.

-Patricia

by Haleigh Svoboda | Texas Tribune
11/3/2011

A report released Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union criticizes the private prison industry for profiting at the expense of a growing prison population.

The report, titled “Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration," accuses private prison companies of lobbying for laws that result in higher incarceration rates. Higher incarceration rates result in more government contracts, which, according to the report, are the primary source of funding for these companies.

“Mass incarceration needlessly wastes scarce tax dollars, contributes to torn communities, and disproportionally affects people of color; too many nonviolent offenders are behind bars, which contributes nothing to public safety,” Terri Burke, executive director of the ACLU of Texas, said in a press release.

Two leading industry companies, Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group, received a combined $3 billion in annual revenue in 2010. According to the report, the CCA acknowledged in records submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission that current sentencing laws increase the company’s profits.

CCA officials could not be reached for comment. The GEO Group declined to comment.

In 2010, the U.S. prison population made up 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, according to the Congressional Research Service. The U.S. incarcerates roughly 2.3 million people, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

In a press release, the ACLU said that lobbying and campaign contributions are two tactics used by private prison companies to secure more government contracts. The release also said that both CCA and GEO donated to Gov. Rick Perry’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign. Government contracts at the local, state and federal levels make of part of these companies’ revenues.

Prisons for Profit

A full transcript and video footage can be seen here.

In addition check out the PBS report "Immigrant Detainees: A New Profit Center?" -Patricia

May 9, 2008
Corporations are running many Americans prisons, but will they put profits before prisoners?

A grim new statistic: One in every hundred Americans is now locked behind bars. As the prison population grows faster than the government can build prisons, private companies see an opportunity for profit.

This week, NOW on PBS investigates the government's trend to outsource prisons and prisoners to the private sector. Critics accuse private prisons of standing in the way of sentencing reform and sacrificing public safety to maximize profits.

"The notion that a corporation making a profit off this practice is more important to us than public safety or the human rights of prisoners is outrageous," Judy Greene, a criminal policy analyst, tells NOW on PBS.

Companies like Corrections Corporation of America say they're doing their part to solve the problem of inmate overflow and a shortage of beds without sacrificing safety.

"You don't cut corners to where it's going to be a safety, security or health issue," Richard Smelser, warden of the Crowley Correctional Facility in Colorado tells NOW. The prison is run by Corrections Corporation, which had revenues of over $1.4 billion last year.

The Crowley prison made headlines back in 2004 after a major prison riot caused overwhelmed staff to run away from the facility. Outside law enforcement had to come in to put down the uprising.

"The problems that were identified in the wake of the riot are typical of the private prison industry and happen over and over again," Green tells NOW.

This week NOW travels to Colorado, where the controversy over private prisons is boiling over. The hot question: should incarceration be incorporated?

U.S. Imprisons One in 100 Adults, Report Finds

This is terrifying: One in 36 adult Hispanic men and one in 15 adult black men is behind bars. This should be a major campaign issue. -
Angela

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: February 29, 2008 /NYTIMES

For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100
American adults are behind bars, according to a new report.

Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing
it to almost 1.6 million, after three decades of growth that has seen
the prison population nearly triple. Another 723,000 people are in
local jails.

The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one
in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 adult
Hispanic men is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for
2006. One in 15 adult black men is, too, as is one in nine black men
ages 20 to 34.

The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that one in
355 white women ages 35 to 39 is behind bars, compared with one in 100
black women.

The report’s methodology differed from that used by the Justice
Department, which calculates the incarceration rate by using the total
population rather than the adult population as the denominator. Using
the department’s methodology, about one in 130 Americans is behind bars.

The increase in the number of prisoners over the last 18 months, the
Pew report says, pushed the national adult incarceration rate to just
over one in 100.

“We aren’t really getting the return in public safety from this level
of incarceration,” said Susan Urahn, the center’s managing director.

But Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and a
former federal judge, said the Pew report considered only half of the
cost-benefit equation and overlooked the “very tangible benefits:
lower crime rates.”

In the past 20 years, according the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
rates of violent crimes fell by 25 percent, to 464 per 100,000 people
in 2007 from 612.5 in 1987.

“While we certainly want to be smart about who we put into prisons,”
Professor Cassell said, “it would be a mistake to think that we can
release any significant number of prisoners without increasing crime
rates. One out of every 100 adults is behind bars because one out of
every 100 adults has committed a serious criminal offense.”

The United States imprisons more people than any other nation in the
world. China is second, with 1.5 million people behind bars. The gap
is even wider in percentage terms.

Germany imprisons 93 out of every 100,000 people, according to the
International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College in London.
The comparable number for the United States is roughly eight times
that, or 750 out of 100,000.

Ms. Urahn said the nation could not afford the incarceration rate
documented in the report.

“We tend to be a country in which incarceration is an easy response to
crime,” she said. “Being tough on crime is an easy position to take,
particularly if you have the money. And we did have the money in the
’80s and ’90s.”

Now, with fewer resources available, the report said, “prison costs
are blowing a hole in state budgets.”

On average, states spend almost 7 percent of their budgets on
corrections, trailing only health care, education and transportation.

In 2007, according to the National Association of State Budget
Officers, states spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections. That
is up from $10.6 billion in 1987, a 127 percent increase when adjusted
for inflation. With money from bonds and the federal government
included, total state spending on corrections last year was $49
billion. By 2011, the Pew report said, states are on track to spend an
additional $25 billion.

It cost an average of $23,876 dollars to imprison someone in 2005, the
most recent year for which data were available. But state spending
varies widely, from $45,000 a year in Rhode Island to $13,000 in Louisiana.

“Getting tough on crime has gotten tough on taxpayers,” said Adam
Gelb, the director of the public safety performance project at the Pew
center. “They don’t want to spend $23,000 on a prison cell for a minor
violation any more than they want a bridge to nowhere.”

The cost of medical care is growing by 10 percent annually, the report
said, and will accelerate as the prison population ages.

About one in nine state government employees works in corrections, and
some states are finding it hard to fill those jobs. California spent
more than $500 million on overtime alone in 2006.

The number of prisoners in California dropped by 4,000 last year,
making Texas’ prison system the nation’s largest, at about 172,000.
But the Texas Legislature last year approved broad changes to the
state’s corrections system, including expansions of drug treatment
programs and drug courts and revisions to parole practices.

“Our violent offenders, we lock them up for a very long time ­
rapists, murderers, child molesters,” said State Senator John
Whitmire, Democrat of Houston and the chairman of the Senate’s
Criminal Justice Committee. “The problem was that we weren’t smart
about nonviolent offenders. The Legislature finally caught up with the public.”

Mr. Whitmire gave an example.

“We have 5,500 D.W.I offenders in prison,” he said, including people
caught driving under the influence who had not been in an accident.
“They’re in the general population. As serious as drinking and driving
is, we should segregate them and give them treatment.”

The Pew report recommended diverting nonviolent offenders away from
prison and using punishments short of reincarceration for minor or
technical violations of probation or parole. It also urged states to
consider earlier release of some prisoners.

Before the recent changes in Texas, Mr. Whitmire said, “we were
recycling nonviolent offenders.”

Too many Latino men are living in prison

Drugs are key here. Good schools are a powerful antidote to this disturbing trend. -Angela

Too many Latino men are living in prison
By RYAN S. KING and ANGELA MARIA ARBOLEDA in Modesto Bee
July 30, 2007

King is a policy analyst with The Sentencing Project. E-mail him at rking@sentencingproject.org . Arboleda is associate director, criminal justice policy, with the National Council of La Raza. E-mail her at aarboleda@nclr.org .


Largely obscured by the rancorous debate surrounding U.S. immigration policy is the emergence of a trend that should be a cause of concern to all Latino communities: the explosion of the number of Latinos in prison.

There were 55,000 Latinos doing prison time in the United States in 1985. That figure has increased by more than 400 percent in 20 years, a substantially steeper rate of increase than for whites or blacks.

Currently, there are more than 450,000 Latinos in U.S. prisons or jails.

With one-in-six Latino males born today expected to spend some time in prison during their lives, the future portends devastating consequences for Latino communities.

This incarceration data stands in stark contrast to a growing body of research suggesting that Latinos, who now make up more than one of every five persons held behind bars, are less likely than other groups to commit crime and that the immigration of the 1990s may have been partially responsible for the historic declines in crime.

Causes for rising Latino incarceration are complex, but an important explanatory factor is the "war on drugs." Despite using drugs at a rate proportionate to their share in the general population, Latinos are twice as likely as whites to be sentenced to a state prison on a drug charge. Nearly one in four Latinos sitting in prison has been convicted of a drug offense.
Differential patterns in law enforcement -- where the police choose to pursue the war on drugs -- play a greater role in determining who is arrested and sentenced to prison than general trends in drug use.

Add to that the collateral consequences from a felony conviction.

These can include barriers to employment, denial of certain licenses, lack of access to education and housing aid, loss of voting rights, and, in some cases, deportation.

Such "invisible punishments" create substantial obstacles to a successful re-entry to the community and increase the likelihood of recidivism.

Despite this spate of distressing news, there are efforts that can be undertaken to stem the tide of disproportionate Latino incarceration.

First, lawmakers should heed the growing chorus of public officials, including high-ranking criminal justice practitioners, and revisit the wisdom of our current drug control strategy. This "lock 'em up" approach has resulted in a half-million people behind bars.

It takes a toll on communities of color while doing little to address the underlying causes of drug abuse. Investing in proven prevention and treatment strategies is far more productive than warehousing people. It's a much more effective tool to enhance public safety.

Secondly, state legislatures should expand upon the reforms implemented in 22 states since 2004 and reconsider such punitive sentencing provisions as mandatory minimums that expose individualsto punishments grossly disproportionate to the conduct for which they have been charged.

Restoring discretion to sentencing judges would permit full consideration of the circumstances of the offense. This could prevent the reoccurrence of cases like that of first-time offender Weldon Angelos, who, because of inflexible sentencing enhancements, was sentenced to prison for 55 years.

His offense? Three marijuana sales while possessing a weapon he never used.
The criminal justice system does not exist in a vacuum. Crime and its associated costs generally reflect a failure to provide equal access to resources such as education, employment, housing and health care. Inequalities in the criminal justice system extend far beyond policing, courts and corrections.

True reform can be achieved only when we seek to bring a broad range of community stakeholders to the table, and invest not merely in police and prisons but in neighborhoods and people.

http://www.modbee.com/opinion/national/story/28696.html

Texas reviews scandal-plagued juvenile prison system

I'm glad to see that this very important story appeared in the Chicago Tribune. I'm so glad that this is getting exposed. But how tragic for these children and their families. -Angela

TRIBUNE UPDATE
Texas reviews scandal-plagued juvenile prison system
By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent

March 26, 2007, 8:02 PM CDT

HOUSTON -- The sentences of many of the 4,700 delinquent youths now being held in Texas' juvenile prisons might have been arbitrarily and unfairly extended by prison authorities and thousands could be freed in a matter of weeks as part of a sweeping overhaul of the scandal-plagued juvenile system, state officials say.

Jay Kimbrough, a special master appointed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry to investigate the system after allegations surfaced that some prison officials were coercing imprisoned youths for sex, said he would assemble a committee to review the sentence of every youth in the system.

The goal, Kimbrough said, is to release any youth whose sentence was improperly extended without justification or in retaliation for filing complaints. In his initial review of sentences, Kimbrough said, he had found many questionable extensions, adding that some experts estimate that more 60 percent of the state's youthful inmates might be languishing under wrongful detention.

Such a mass emptying of a state's juvenile jails would be unprecedented, experts said.

Among the leading candidates for early release is Shaquanda Cotton, a 14-year-old black girl from the small east Texas town of Paris, who was sent to prison for up to 7 years for shoving a hall monitor at her high school while other young white offenders convicted of more serious crimes received probation in the town's courts.

Shaquanda's story was the subject of a March 12 Tribune article that triggered hundreds of Internet blog articles and thousands of message board postings and led to a nationwide letter-writing campaign to the Texas governor decrying perceived racial discrimination in her case.

Cotton, now 15, has been incarcerated at a youth prison in Brownwood, Texas, for the last year on a sentence that could run until her 21st birthday. But like many of the other youths in the system, she is eligible to earn earlier release if she achieves certain social, behavioral and educational milestones while in prison.

But officials at the Ron Jackson Correctional Complex have repeatedly extended Shaquanda's sentence because she refuses to admit her guilt and because she was found with contraband in her cell--an extra pair of socks.

"I do have an interest in that case," Kimbrough said. "Based on what I've already seen and heard, that's exactly the kind of thing I want to know more about, if that typifies in some way why sentences are being extended."

Will Harrell, executive director of the Texas chapter of the ACLU, attended a meeting in Austin on last Friday where Kimbrough outlined his sentence review plan and invited civil rights groups to nominate members to the special review panel.

"Everybody in the room thought we should take Shaquanda's case first," Harrell said, because of its high profile.

But if the teenager is released, Kimbrough noted, the decision will have nothing to do with whether she was the victim of racial discrimination in the schools and courtrooms of Paris, as civil rights groups have alleged. Instead, it will be based on whether she has been treated arbitrarily by prison officials since she has been incarcerated.

Texas' juvenile prison system, known as the Texas Youth Commission, was first rocked by scandal last month after revelations surfaced that two administrators at a youth prison in west Texas had allegedly coerced sex from inmates for years and that prison officials and local prosecutors chose not to pursue the cases.

Since then, the scandal has widened as reports surfaced of cover-ups and alleged sex abuse by guards and administrators at other prisons. More than a thousand investigations have now been opened. Meanwhile, Kimbrough discovered that 111 employees of the youth agency had felony arrests or convictions and another 437 had misdemeanor arrests or charges.

The top leadership of the youth commission was forced out, the board overseeing the agency resigned and Perry essentially placed the commission into receivership when he appointed Kimbrough to clean up the mess.

Texas state legislators are rushing to pass bills to overhaul the juvenile prison agency.

Civil rights advocates have long been concerned that Texas' system of indeterminate sentences for youths places too much discretion in the hands of prison authorities, who retain the power to hold or release youths at will. Now the sex scandal--and the concern that some victimized youths may have been threatened with longer detentions to keep them quiet--has prompted Kimbrough to examine the entire practice.

Nearly 90 percent of juveniles incarcerated inside Texas youth prisons were sent there on indeterminate sentences that could run as long as their 21st birthdays. But many of those inmates become eligible for release after serving only nine months, if prison authorities are satisfied that they have completed all the steps, or "phases," of an elaborate behavioral modification program.

"The system is wide open for abuse and corruption," said the ACLU's Harrell. "How difficult would it be for a 12-year-old kid to file a complaint on an assistant superintendent of a facility when that assistant superintendent is actually the one who is sexually abusing her and that same person gets to decide when she gets out? Basically the official gets to say, 'Comply and keep quiet or I'll keep you here until you're 21.' "

Harrell, who will serve on Kimbrough's sentence review panel, said the members intend to be careful not to release truly violent youths who ought to remain behind bars.

"If kids have behaved violently, then those are the ones that may very well have a justification for their sentence extension," Harrell said. "But most of the cases I have heard about have to do with petty instances, like Shaquanda's contraband socks."

The "phases" system also contains a built-in Catch-22 for youths, like Shaquanda, whose legal appeals are still making their way through the courts. One of the first phases that must be satisfied is a requirement that youths admit their guilt--an admission that would instantly compromise their appeals.

For his part, Kimbrough says he feels a sense of urgency about his review.

"As fast as we can do this, that's my goal," said Kimbrough, a former deputy attorney general. "Any time the government is holding somebody that ought not be held, that's urgent to me."

hwitt@tribune.com
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-070326juveniles,1,1122206.story?coll=chi-news-hed