That is simply not correct.
>...In the 2016 election cycle, private prisons gave a record $1.6 million to candidates, parties and outside spending groups.
90% of that came from one company (GEO Group).
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=G7000
Now compare the private prison industry to the prison guard union in CA CCPOA(California Correctional Peace Officers Association).
>...These dues raise approximately $23 million each year, of which the CCPOA allocates approximately $8 million to lobbying.
This is just the CA prison guard union and it is $8 million a year.
From the same article:
>...many of [CCPOA’s] contributions are directly pro-incarceration. It gave over $100,000 to California’s Three Strikes initiative, Proposition 184 in 1994, making it the second-largest contributor. It gave at least $75,000 to the opponents of Proposition 36, the 2000 initiative that replaced incarceration with substance abuse treatment for certain nonviolent offenders. From 1998 to 2000 it gave over $120,000 to crime victims’ groups, who present a more sympathetic face to the public in their pro-incarceration advocacy. It spent over $1 million to help defeat Proposition 66, the 2004 initiative that would have limited the crimes that triggered a life sentence under the Three Strikes law. And in 2005, it killed Gov. Schwarzenegger’s plan to “reduce the prison population by as much as 20,000, mainly through a program that diverted parole violators into rehabilitation efforts: drug programs, halfway houses and home detention.”
https://californiapolicycenter.org/the-role-of-the-prison-gu...
Besides lobbying for more incarceration, they also lobby to prevent accountability:
>...Between 1989 and 1999, 39 inmates were shot to death, and 200 more were wounded. Not one district attorney in the state prosecuted a correctional officer for any of these assaults. ... Local district attorneys have good reason to hesitate before taking a position against the CCPOA’s interests. Greg Strickland, former district attorney in Kings County, home to Corcoran state correctional facilitity, attempted to take a brutality case to the grand jury. The CCPOA fueled his opponent with $30,000 in the next election, leading to Strickland’s defeat. A similar scenario happened in Del Norte County and in Susanville.
https://web.archive.org/web/20061006074501/http://www.cjcj.o...
You further misunderstood the first link the bar chart below lists 4.3 million in 2019 and 2.8 million in 2016. But, that’s a subset of total spending which very focused on their bottom line.
PS: California is both very large and unusual in it’s use of propositions for major policies which confuses the issue. Nationwide union spending has a vastly lower average.
I never implied this was a total breakdown of their lobbying money. They spend an estimated 8 million a year on lobbying. As the wikipedia article says:
>...Although its membership is relatively small, representing only about one tenth the membership of the California Teachers Association, CCPOA political activity routinely exceeds that of all other labor unions in California.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peace_...
>...You further misunderstood the first link the bar chart below lists 4.3 million in 2019 and 2.8 million in 2016. But, that’s a subset of total spending which very focused on their bottom line.
Sorry, I was in a hurry and didn't notice they had a chart for Lobbying Totals, 1998-2019, that gives a better indication than just 2016. That shows a little over $4 million total political lobbying nationally by the private prison industry. That compares to $8 million alone in CA by the prison guard union. You originally said:
>...They often brought up to deflect discussion, but simply operate at a order of magnitude smaller scale.
This one union in one state spends more on lobbying than the private prison industry. And as the article says:
>...“The formula is simple: more prisoners lead to more prisons; more prisons require more guards; more guards means more dues-paying members and fund-raising capability; and fund-raising, of course, translates into political influence.”
The political contributions of the CA prison guard union are obviously not being done to lower the number of prison guard positions. It wasn't the private prison lobby that pushed through all that bad policy in CA.
In reality, private prisons are often brought up to deflect discussion. The reality is private prisons house a small percentage of prisoners and are a tiny part of the prison industrial complex.
CA getting rid of private prisons isn't going to help reform a broken prison system.
>...Nationwide union spending has a vastly lower average.
You haven't given any evidence that is true. Even if true, just because it costs less to influence policy in other states, doesn't mean they aren't trying to do it.
True, but number of guards and their salaries are surprisingly independent of the number of prisoners. https://www.scstatehouse.gov/CommitteeInfo/HouseLegislativeO... Unions can thus lobby for higher wages or more officers without lobbing for more prisoners. Private prisons on the other hand directly profit on a per inmate basis. As they need to look cost competitive with public prisons they thus need to lobby for more prisoners if they want increased profits. That’s either from more private prisons or more prisoners at existing prisons.
Again I am not saying unions don’t do a lot of lobbying they clearly do for all sorts of things, most recently to stop prisoner transfers during COVID-19 and get more PPE. https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/coronavirus/canaan-federal-... So what I am saying is their don’t focus on increasing the prison population as a primary motivation, thus you need to look at the issues their spending money on. Ex: https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-prison-guard-union-calls...
> You haven’t given any evidence that this is true
CA: As of 2017, the union had 39,750 members
Just one of many examples of a union at the other end of the spectrum: https://mnlabor.wordpress.com/2013/07/20/prison-guards-vote-...
The election makes WACLE the representative for about 5,900 state security and public safety workers, a big chunk of the 22,000 members who belonged to WSEU before Act 10 outlawed most state employee collective bargaining and made union membership voluntary.
PS: Private prisons are recent and growing thing making comparisons even a 10 years ago misses the current reality.
Rather than coming up with hypotheticals of how you think they could operate, it is more useful to look at what they did:
>...many of [CCPOA’s] contributions are directly pro-incarceration. It gave over $100,000 to California’s Three Strikes initiative, Proposition 184 in 1994, making it the second-largest contributor. It gave at least $75,000 to the opponents of Proposition 36, the 2000 initiative that replaced incarceration with substance abuse treatment for certain nonviolent offenders. From 1998 to 2000 it gave over $120,000 to crime victims’ groups, who present a more sympathetic face to the public in their pro-incarceration advocacy. It spent over $1 million to help defeat Proposition 66, the 2004 initiative that would have limited the crimes that triggered a life sentence under the Three Strikes law. And in 2005, it killed Gov. Schwarzenegger’s plan to “reduce the prison population by as much as 20,000, mainly through a program that diverted parole violators into rehabilitation efforts: drug programs, halfway houses and home detention.”
I don't know where private prisons spend their lobbying money, but in terms of a hypothetical private prison, they have such a small percentage of prisons, the best return for their money would probably be to lobby for privatization and bidding against government prisons. The only thing we really do know is that industry spends less nationally than the prison guard union in CA alone spends on lobbying. The prison problems in CA can't be blamed on private prisons and trying to do so is simple deflection.
>...Again I am not saying unions don’t do a lot of lobbying they clearly do for all sorts of things, most recently to stop prisoner transfers during COVID-19 and get more PPE.
Yes health/safety issues are the things they should lobby for, the issue that they have so much money, they also lobby for lots of things they shouldn't be involved with.
>Just one of many examples of a union at the other end of the spectrum:
Well there has been a backlash against public sector unions in Wisconsin and one group of prison guards has decided to leave AFSCME and form a new union with supposedly less interest in electoral politics. That doesn't tell us much about how much influence they had before this point.
>PS: Private prisons are recent and growing thing making comparisons even a 10 years ago misses the current reality.
Not really. Private prisons first started around 1987 and have a slow growth in the number of prisoners compared to public prisons. The last 10 years have been stagnant with little growth.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/private_prison_growth_to...
It is clear though that claiming that prison guard unions "simply operate at a order of magnitude smaller scale." is simply wrong.
With the way they are currently regulated, it isn't clear if private prisons are much better than state run prisons, but to focus on them and ignore law enforcement public sector unions is a deflection.
The current system is broken though. Those of us who care about prison reform, also care about the lack of accountability of prison guards and the cruelty for cruelty sake that seems to permeate the prison system. When you have the people who regulate the system are the same ones who run it, though what do you expect? Take the example of Cochran prison. This was a prison which shot and killed more prisoners than any prison in the country and the guards were setting up and then betting on gladiator battles.
>...Guards and inmates described macabre scenes in which prison officers gathered in control booths overlooking cramped exercise yards in advance of fights, which were sometimes delayed so that female guards and even prison secretaries could be present.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/staged-fights-betti...
After 60 minutes covered the story, the California Department of Corrections did an investigation and naturally found no "'widespread staff conspiracy' to abuse prisoners".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Prison,_Corco...
Anyway, I don’t want to bring up the same point, but over a 26 year period that quote covers nearly 1% of total spending which is clearly not a major focus.
> The last 10 years have been stagnant with little growth.
Yes, and like many industries that’s changed their focus. EX: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/profiting-enforcemen...
In 2015, the private prison industry operated 62 percent of immigration detention beds and ran nine of the ten largest detention centers housing ICE detainees. Although the model of prison privatization varies, a private prison typically charges a daily rate per person incarcerated to cover investment and operating costs, and to turn a profit. In FY 2017, DHS spent approximately $126 per day for each detained noncitizen. As immigration detention costs steadily increased to around $2 billion annually, industry profits soared. Between 2007 and 2014, CoreCivic’s overall annual profits grew from about $133 million to $195 million, and GEO Group’s profits grew from about $42 million to $144 million yearly.
When your talking 62% of a specific market that’s worth lobbing for. As shown by very healthy profit growth in a ‘stagnant’ industry.
Preventing any accountability for many murders, probably goes a little beyond "arguably shouldn’t". Though in particular, the infamous gladiator spectacle at Cochran though was likely more a case of what happens when an organization regulates itself. People seem to understand that it isn't a good idea for businesses that could harm the public to regulate themselves, but forgot that idea when it is a government agency.
>...Anyway, I don’t want to bring up the same point, but over a 26 year period that quote covers nearly 1% of total spending which is clearly not a major focus.
That is more like the tip of the iceberg. LA Times reporter Dan Moraine estimates the prison guard union might have 11 PACS.
>The political budget flows out in 6 main directions.
>CCPOA pays for public relations.
>CCPOA pays for lobbying services.
>CCPOA funds affiliate groups.
>CCPOA contributes “soft money” to political parties, political events, debates.
>CCPOA gives direct contributions to candidates.
>Election winners support the CCPOA political agenda.
>Tough on crime legislation fuels expansion of the correctional system.
>Expanded correctional system adds membership to the CCPOA.
https://web.archive.org/web/20061006074501/http://www.cjcj.o...
>In 2015, the private prison industry operated 62 percent of immigration detention beds
Immigration detention is not usually what the average person thinks of when they think of private prison, so it is good to call out the differences so everyone is talking about the same things.
>...When your talking 62% of a specific market that’s worth lobbing for. As shown by very healthy profit growth in a ‘stagnant’ industry.
Their lobbying though is a tiny fraction of the lobbying of law enforcement groups.
Yes, very much so.
Abolishing private prisons is a good start, but we need much more drastic reform to the prison-industrial complex and failed "tough on crime" policies, particular in the realms of drug policy, community investment, and mental health.