Posts Tagged ‘Prison Industrial Complex’
Immigrant Detainees in Louisiana on Hunger Strike
7:36 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration| Justice · 4 Comments
4 Aug 2009
When your cuerpo is used as fodder to feed the prison industrial complex, how do you transform that body into a weapon of protest? For immigrants caught up in detention, using their bodies to protest the horrible and inhumane conditions inside is nothing new. What is new is the context that the current administration has made it clear that prison “reform” is not a priority, much less if the prisons we are talking about “reforming” are for those labeled alien/foreign/unwanted/brown.
Now, another group of immigrants inside a detention center are on hunger strike, their fifth one, in protest of the deplorable conditions at the South Louisiana Correctional Facility in Basile. This detention center is run by the private contractor LCS Corrections Services Inc. and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
According to the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, more than 100 detainees acted as human rights monitors inside the jail throughout July. “Over the course of a month, detainee human rights monitors recorded complaints, attempted to lodge hundreds of grievances, and communicated with advocates about jail conditions,” said NOWCRJ, which released a report of their findings and the accounts of the several detainees.
Give Us your tired, your poor, Just Not Your Sick cuz We’ll Deport Them
7:39 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Health| Immigration| Obama · Comments Off
30 Jul 2009
Is it too radical to believe that hospitals should be like churches? That they should be safe spaces where people can get what they went their for, health care? Instead a court decision has legitimized hospitals acting as ICE agents and Homeland Security.
A hospital that sent a seriously brain injured illegal immigrant back to Guatemala – over the objections of his family and legal guardian – did not act unreasonably, a jury found Monday…
Health care and immigration experts across the country have closely watched the court case in the sleepy, coastal town of Stuart. The hospital had cared for Jimenez, who was uninsured, for three years. But it was unable to find any nursing home to take him permanently because his immigration status meant the government would not reimburse his care.
Immigrant Detention is the New Money Maker
11:17 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration| Justice| Money · 3 Comments
18 Mar 2009
In these economic times, those with the least suffer the most and become the new fodder for the prison industrial complex.
Washington paid nearly $55.2 million to house detainees at 13 local jails in California in fiscal year 2008, up from $52.6 million the previous year. The U.S. is on track to spend $57 million this year.
The largest federal contract in the state is with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, whose 1,400-bed detention center in Lancaster is dedicated to housing immigrants either awaiting deportation or fighting their cases in court. The department received $34.7 million in 2008, up from $32.3 million the previous year.
Some smaller cities have seen their income rise much faster. Glendale received nearly $260,000 in 2008, triple what it got the previous year. In Alhambra, last year’s $247,000 was more than double the previous year’s payments.
For some cash-strapped cities, the federal money has become a critical source of revenue, covering budget shortfalls and saving positions.
Via / The LA Times y gracias to Nezua via the Twitter
San Diego to Clean Out It’s Jails With Help of ICE
11:04 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration| san diego · 1 Comment
20 Nov 2008
My mentor Richie Perez said once that people of color are the raw material/human fodder for the machine that is the prison industrial complex. And when that machine gets clogged what do you do? You take a page from San Diego County, California and clean up with the help not of Joe the Plumber, but ICE.
San Diego County recently announced that it would soon be partnering with ICE and dedicating its energy to identifying immigrants in jail for deportation. ICE unveiled its new program – The Secure Communities Program – in March 2008. It gives jails access to ICE and FBI databases so that they can identify inmates who lack legal status or have a criminal history and then turn them over to ICE for deportation. Through this new initiative, ICE plans to eventually have a presence in every one of the 3,100 local jails throughout the U.S.
Disturbing Statistic : San Francsico Has More Blacks in Jail than in the City
7:35 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Justice| San Francisco| race · Comments Off
9 May 2008
The prison industrial complex is alive and well in San Francisco and it’s using blacks as the raw material. In recent years the black population in the city of San Francisco has been decreasing, with one exception, prisons.
More than 60 percent of all prisoners are African American, according
to a survey of the city jail’s population. And of the 282 female
prisoners, 67 percent are black.
About 42 percent of the jail population is in custody for drug
offenses, the study found.
A similar study in 1996 found that half of the jail population was
African American. A 2005 study put the number at 53 percent.
In contrast, 6.7 percent of San Francisco residents are black- a number that has been in steady decline, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
What is the reason for this alarming stat? Racial profiling.
And the Prison Industrial Complex Grows and Grows
9:29 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Justice| Politics| race · Comments Off
6 Mar 2008
Late last month a report released by the Pew Center reveals what many have already known, that prisons are growing with people of color as the human raw materials for this industry.
The United States, land of the free, home of the brave, now incarcerates more people than any other country on the globe. More than one in every 100 U.S. residents is incarcerated.
The 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said.
Is there any doubt then what the U.S. thinks of its youth, especially it’s youth of color?
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- Mangos With Chili Presents Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead in the Bay Area Tonite & Nov. 15th
- Vigil for Marcelo LuceroThis Evening in Patchogue, Long Island, NY
- VL At The Cine: The Fourth Kind
- Rihanna interview
- One of Marcelo Lucero’s Attackers Pleads Guilty
- Remembering Marcelo Lucero : One Year Later, The List of Hate Crimes Grows Longer
- Rihanna Speaks
- A Message To Maine
- Maine Voters Said Yes on 1 and Yes to Marriage Inequity
- New York City Wakes Up to Four More Years of Bloomberg
