Didn't DC just vote to legalize it, you just cannot buy or sell it.
Here is to hoping the next big issue after marriage equality if fixing our drug laws, which are more damaging than many will admit and far too profitable to law enforcement and the prison industry.
@metrix many prisons are run by for-profit companies. It costs the taxpayers a lot, but there is profit to be made, and some elected officials benefit at least indirectly. edit: awkward wording
That's a common narrative, but it's not the driving force behind the drug war. Look at corruption, look at hardened attitudes on drugs, look at race, look at civil asset forfeiture, look at the militarization of law enforcement. That's where the momentum for the drug war is coming from, not so much from for-profit prison systems (though that does add a small component).
Not to mention private prisons have never been a large fraction of the prison system. The drug war dates to the late 1960s - and goes back further culturally. Corporate prisons were even less relevant when the drug war started putting tons of people in prison circa 1980, than they are today.
The problem is the US Government, and always has been.
if you add prison guards unions - which are formally non-profit, and that only means that they have no taxes to pay and they have nobody else to give the formal profit away, and as result they have all the money they collect to themselves - you'd get pretty much 100% of US prisons run by organizations with direct financial interests in growing the prisons in size and number.
yep, there is a reason why military for example aren't allowed to form a union. I hope CIA/FBI/NSA aren't allowed to have it too. And prison guards and police shouldn't be allowed to. Holders of "license for violence" shouldn't have masters other than the government hierarchy they belong to thus minimizing conflict of interests.
If you look at who's making profit on war on drugs, look up how much money is taken by civil forfeiture. That's where the real money is. And by real money I mean millions, hundreds of millions. Just one case: http://www.government-fleet.com/news/story/2012/04/rhode-isl... There are many, many more. And not only from fatcats - there are thousand of forfeiture cases for sums like $300-$500.
The money made on prisons, is made by construction firms, labor that works at the prison, and slave labor used to manufacture things. There is a ton of profit being made from government prisons.
I always find it bizarre that people point to the 5% to 8% problem - corporate prisons - and think that is the problem, while pretending the huge money that circles around the other 92% - the government prisons - is benign by comparison. The other 92% is even more vile than the 8% corporate prisons - it's 11 times larger.
EDIT: Here's a cute quote from Corrections Corporation of America, one of the largest for-profit prison companies:
"any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them." [0]
It's true they have a financial incentive to maintain current drug laws, but those same incentives exist for many important roles.
If someone comes up with a cure for cancer, a lot of oncologists are going to be out of a job. Does that mean that oncologists are actively suppressing cancer cures?
This might be the most useless analogy I have ever encountered. I'm sorry, I don't mean to attack you but I honestly have no idea what your point is.
Corrections Corporation of America and other private prison companies openly fight efforts to relax drugs laws. Same for prison guard unions; In 2008 the CCPoA, California's largest prison guard union, was the most active opponent of Prop 5, which would have expanded treatment for non-violent drug offenders, and reduced criminal penalties for non-violent drug crimes [1].
As far as I know, oncologists are not fighting cancer research in order to protect their careers.
I guess I'm questioning why the assumption is that they support drug laws because it makes them money. They may be supporting it for other reasons (strongly support law and order).
They have a duty to their shareholders to grow revenue and stay in business. If something threatens that, they will fight it. Like many other commercial enterprise they will spend money on lobbying to protect profits, in this case it is just particularly sickening how big the problem has become.
You just proved my point! Doctors who work in a group practice have a fiduciary duty to grow revenue. Does that mean doctors cut corners to make more money? I'm sure some do.
Do private prisons fight relaxing laws to make more money? I'm sure some do, but most don't.
> Do private prisons fight relaxing laws to make more money? I'm sure some do, but most don't.
Corrections Corporation of America does, and they account for more than 80,000 of the 133,000 private prison beds in the US. GEO Group does, and they account for about 49,000. Together they thus represents the vast majority of private prisons in the US.
Both of them are part of ALEC - a DC base lobbying group that develops model legislation that it then pushes as a means for state legislators to be "tough on crime".
I believe they're referring to the private prison industry, which makes a pretty penny off locking up non-violent drug offenders. Their trade organization listed liberalizing drug laws as a potential threat to their bottom line in their last annual report, so we can expect that they will fiercely lobby against anything happening at a federal level.
I feel like this situation is overstated a lot. Something like 8% of prisoners in the US are in privately run prisons, which could be a problem, but it's not the massive number that is often implied.
People do often overestimate how many prisoners are in privately-run prisons, but at the same time, if the US suddenly had 10% fewer prisoners, those privately-run prisons would likely be the first to go.
As far as lobbying, the other 92% of prisoners are guarded by very powerful public sector unions, whose incentives are the same.
It's absolutely massive when you consider that locking up humans in cages is perhaps not the sort of thing we ought to encourage by making the practice lucrative.
The existence of even a single for-profit prison provides a perverse incentive to put the marginal criminal into a private, profit-generating cage rather than a public, tax-draining, politically-risky rehabilitation or diversion program.
Furthermore, it is an invitation to corruption. Remember the judge that was sending juvenile defendants to a reform camp, often regardless of the merits of their cases, because he was getting kickbacks from the camp?
It's not just the privately run prison complexes, but also suppliers, consultancies, police equipment manufacturers, arms manufacturers, and so. That's the 'industrial' in prison industrial complex.
Something like 8% of prisoners in the US are in privately run prisons, which could be a problem, but it's not the massive number that is often implied.
Quick, off the top of your head: do you have any idea just how many people are incarcerated in this country, in both absolute and per-capita terms, and how those figures compare to, say, every other country on Earth?
8% of the US prison population is a HELL of a lot of people.
That's true, but 8% of anything in the US is a lot. There's roughly 2.2 million prisoners so maybe 200k of them are held in private prisons. And as someone points out upthread, when you add in all that prison-building, the firms that deliver services tot he corrections market and so on, it adds up to a lot of economic activity.
About 133,000 as of 2013. And two companies (CCA and GEO Group), both of whom are aggressively fighting for tougher laws as a matter of course have about 129,000 bed capacity.
That still means there are millionaires out there lobbying to keep drug laws as is so they can keep filling their prisons. And the other 92% of prisons probably have a ton of people behind bars due to drug laws because of the 8% of prisons that lobby for & profit from them.
As though the 92% isn't attempting to hold onto its massive profit system. There's vastly more money flowing into pockets in the 92% than in the 8%, that's logically obvious.
Jobs, graft, construction, maintenance, slave labor, etc. - huge sums of profit derived from the government prison system, far more than in the corporate system.
As though the 92% of that equation is looking to give up its jobs and tax dollars. Because we just know how much the government likes to give up its spending.
The government makes a lot more money locking people up than the private prison industry does.
It's 11 times larger. That's a lot of tax money to roll around in, and generates a ton of profit in the form of slave labor manufacturing, graft, jobs that politicians use as platforms, labor unions that get kickbacks and get to dole out well paying jobs.
What's the difference, when we're speaking of "profit" when it comes to whether the corporate prison generates a 7% margin, or whether that 7% goes to a union at a government prison? There is no real difference, it's just a matter of whose pocket the cash ends up in.
Exactly. That means there's a whole industry / sector of government trying to make it look like a lot of people should be prisoners to protect their jobs and expand their departments.
I think in DC the situation will be that private individuals can't sell it, but there will be licensed dispensaries. That's pending congressional approval though. (Really it's pending congress not striking it down, which they seem loathe to do except for one very zealous committee member without much power).
> I think in DC the situation will be that private individuals can't sell it, but there will be licensed dispensaries.
No, the DC provision does not allow for licensed dispensaries for recreational use[0]. (Dispensaries for medical use have just begun opening under the medical law passed in 2011, but this is separate from the situation in Colorado post-Amendment 64).
> That's pending congressional approval though. (Really it's pending congress not striking it down, which they seem loathe to do except for one very zealous committee member without much power).
Do you have a source for this? Congress has struck down similar measures from DC in the past.
Oops you're right, I thought the initiative had a provision for the dispensaries to sell to everyone, but that will have to happen in the city council. Grosso has a bill pending for it, but media doesn't seem to think the council is in a hurry; they'll at least wait out congress.
I'm trying to track down my source for the approval, but the general thought seems to be that the republicans other than Andy Harris (aforementioned super opposed member) are less likely to start a fight where they're in the minority on a "state's rights" issue during what should be a quiet legislative session.
Harris isn't a committee chair so he can't bring up the ban/amendment without help. I don't know the committee politics to well enough to know this is likely; but usually they sneak these things in as budget riders which takes the approval of the committee chair.
Here is to hoping the next big issue after marriage equality if fixing our drug laws, which are more damaging than many will admit and far too profitable to law enforcement and the prison industry.