Begging for Enemies of the State

John Young jya at pipeline.com
Fri Sep 7 13:40:09 PDT 2001


WSJ had a hilarious report yesterday about the frantic
search for prisoners to fill empty prison beds that have
resulted from frantic construction to meet court orders
and mandatory sentencing now offset by declining crime 
rates -- or sentencing rates -- and governments kicking 
prisoners out of jail to reduce costs.

The competiton between government-run prisons and
the commercial ops have led to fabulous lobbying and
jawboning of legislators and wardens to spread the
lucrative but diminishing prison-care population around, 
represented in the report by Mississippi's plight of 
having too few prisoners to fill its state pens and county
jails. At one point a bill was near passage that would
have paid commercial operators for empty beds, for "ghost
prisoners," so they wouldn't pull out to the business
(following the admirable lead of the defense and farming
industries). When that term made it into the news, there was
a quick veto of the bill, but still the struggle goes on to find
more prisoners or bookkeeping simulations thereof.

Florida leads the nation with over 80,000 empty prison beds.

Pity the pressured investigators and prosecutors and
spooks to fabricate more enemies of the state or 
AP-bookkeeping simulations thereof.





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