On today's Your Call, we’ll talk about the expansion of the private prison industry. California has been ordered to reduce its prison population by 9,500 inmates by the end of February. One of Jerry Brown’s options is to transfer some of those people to privately owned facilities. So how do private prisons work? Who’s ending up in them? Who’s profiting? Join the conversation on the next Your Call with Rose Aguilar and You.
Guests:
Pat Beall, investigative reporter with the Palm Beach Post, and author of the series, “Private Prisons: Profit, Politics, Pain”
Alex Friedmann, managing editor of Prison Legal News; president of the Private Corrections Institute, a citizen watchdog group that opposes prison privatization; and a former prisoner in state and private facilities
Chris Kirkham, reporter for the Huffington Post, and co-author of the article, “For-Profit Prisons Are Big Winners of California’s Overcrowding Crisis”
Resources:
Palm Beach Post: Private Prisons: Profit, Politics, Pain
Huffington Post: For-Profit Prisons Are Big Winners Of California's Overcrowding Crisis
Columbia Journalism Review: The Palm Beach Post takes a long, hard look at private prisons
Grassroots Leadership: Locked up and Shipped Away: Interstate Prisoner Transfers and the Private Prison Industry
Capitol Public Radio: California Begins Transferring Inmates to Private Prisons
Salon: Humans shipped across the country: How America exports inmates to private prisons
AllGov: Housing Prisoners from other States has become a $320 Million a Year Industry
