Friday, March 30, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Correctional Officers - Poll: Should Employers Access Your Facebook Page?
Several lawmakers are investigating whether this practice is illegal.
By Lisa Rossi
Maryland is considering two bills that would make the practice illegal and two U.S. senators have asked the U.S. attorney general to look into whether the practice violates federal law. Opponents of the practice have said it not only violates personal privacy, it could put a prospective employer at risk for discrimination complaints. But some say the practice, if done legally and ethically, could help some companies make sure they don’t hire someone who could put a company’s reputation at risk.
“Employees in sales, public relations and customer service function as representatives for the companies they work for, so employers have a legitimate interest in ensuring potential workers won’t embarrass the company,” wrote Timothy Lee, of the think tank the Cato Institute, in a recent story on Bloomberg Business Week. Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan recently posted that employers might put themselves at risk if they ask prospective employees to provide passwords.
“For example, if an employer sees on Facebook that someone is a member of a protected group (e.g. over a certain age, etc.) that employer may open themselves up to claims of discrimination if they don’t hire that person,’ Egan wrote. The controversy over employers asking for Facebook passwords has made headlines in Maryland.
Former correctional officer Robert Collins said that last year he was asked to give his Facebook password to his superior at the Maryland Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services. Collins told CBS Baltimore he asked corrections officials what they were looking for and was told, “I’m looking through your messages, through your wall, through your pictures and through your posts to make sure that you’re not flashing any gang signs or involved in any illegal activity.”
In April of 2011, the Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services made the review of social media sites during the interview process for correctional officer applicants voluntary, according to a press release.
They will also not be asked to supply log-in or password information, the press release said. Maryland corrections officials said questions about social media activity are designed to eliminate candidates who engage in illegal activity or have gang affiliations.
http://catonsville.patch.com/articles/poll-should-employers-access-your-facebook-page-a20431af“The department is doing its due diligence to check any avenue to look for signs that someone might be having association with a gang--and it is a problem inside prisons,” Rick Binetti, a Maryland corrections spokesman, told Patch Monday. “The majority of violence in prison is driven through gangs and trading and contraband, and it’s not unique to Maryland.”
The ACLU of Maryland is among the groups pushing for a state law barring employers from asking for Facebook passwords or to access private accounts. The ACLU has said in an email to supporters that the Maryland Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services policy change to make the social media review voluntary does not go far enough, and said efforts to access private accounts is a "gross infringement of privacy."
House Bill 964 and Senate Bill 433 prohibit employers from asking employees or job applicants for information to access any personal electronic communications accounts. Nationally, two Democratic senators, New York’s Chuck Schumer and Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal are calling for investigations into whether employers are violating federal law when they ask for Facebook passwords during job interviews, according to the Huffington Post.
Other states are considering legislation on the issue as well, including Illinois, California and Massachusetts, which has a bill under consideration that forbids employers from “friending” job applicants in order to see private Facebook sites as well, the Huffington Post reported.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Double Bunking Dangerous to Staff
A recent article posted by blogger “On the Hudson” Nick Reisman - on Feb 09, 2011 states that “New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association President Donn Rowe today warned in his testimony before a joint legislative budget committee that the state could face a “catastrophe” if Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s prison closure plan moves forward.” Though the administration says the state facilities have 3,500 empty beds, NYSCOPBA claims the maximum security prisons are operating at 122 percent capacity. The union worries that an increase in dangerous “double-bunking” of inmates and a growth in dangerous prisoners has made the state’s prison facilities all the more crowded and necessary. [1]
Unfortunately, their perspective of this potential danger has already hit Arizona’s prison system as the state’s prison facilities are experiencing high rates of staff assaults and even more inmate on inmate assaults as they are warehousing inmates beyond their capacity to manage or find beds for them. Double bunking, even at maximum custody is no stranger in Arizona. As of 2005, this writer has been personally involved in the installation of over 800 double bunks within the Florence Eyman complex and has seen the rise in staff assaults and inmate on inmate assaults that have resulted in serious life threatening injuries and at least two homicides reported as such. All this bed expansion was done without an increase in the staffing patterns or physical plant which means the number of showers, toilets and other personal hygiene amenities are not proportional to the number of inmates living inside those cellblocks or living dormitories.
A recent proposal to add 5,000 beds on to their growth is based on the fact that Arizona has no empty beds and has one of the fastest growing incarceration rates in the country. Arizona lawmakers refuse to change sentencing laws in order to provide alternatives to prison sentencing as there appears to be an organized effort to promote private prisons inside the state since Janet Brewer, the newly elected governor and interim governor before the election appointed her two closest aides as consultants to the prison industry. The current prison population on February 7, 2011 was at 40,053 inmates. [2]
Phoenix television reporter Morgan Loew, CBS 5 Investigative Reporter, reported that “ Gov. Jan Brewer’s campaign chairman and policy adviser is also a lobbyist for the largest private prison company in the country. Chuck Coughlin is one of two people in the Brewer administration with ties to Corrections Corporation of America. The other administration member is communications director Paul Senseman, a former CCA lobbyist. His wife still lobbies for the company. According to campaign finance records, CCA executives and employees contributed more than $1,000 to the governor’s re-election campaign.” [3]
He goes on to report “The Company’s political action committee and its lobbyists contributed another $60,000 to Brewer’s top legislative priority, Proposition 100, a sales tax to help avoid budget cuts to education. Caroline Isaacs from the American Friends Service Committee, which advocates for social justice issues, said the money is evidence of influence the company has on the governor. Isaacs said private prison companies have been buying influence in Arizona politics for years. The number of private prisons and jails operating across the state shows the result of that influence, he said. Currently, there are at least 12 for-profit prison, jail and detention facilities in Arizona.” [3]
Double Bunking Dangerous to Staff videoSources:
[1]http://polhudson.lohudblogs.com/2011/02/09/correction-officers-union-warns-of-catastrophic-prison-closure/
[2]http://www.azcorrections.gov/adc/divisions/adminservices/Request_for_Proposal_110054dc.aspx
[3]http://www.kpho.com/news/24834877/detail.html
A recent article posted by blogger “On the Hudson” Nick Reisman - on Feb 09, 2011 states that “New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association President Donn Rowe today warned in his testimony before a joint legislative budget committee that the state could face a “catastrophe” if Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s prison closure plan moves forward.” Though the administration says the state facilities have 3,500 empty beds, NYSCOPBA claims the maximum security prisons are operating at 122 percent capacity. The union worries that an increase in dangerous “double-bunking” of inmates and a growth in dangerous prisoners has made the state’s prison facilities all the more crowded and necessary. [1]
Unfortunately, their perspective of this potential danger has already hit Arizona’s prison system as the state’s prison facilities are experiencing high rates of staff assaults and even more inmate on inmate assaults as they are warehousing inmates beyond their capacity to manage or find beds for them. Double bunking, even at maximum custody is no stranger in Arizona. As of 2005, this writer has been personally involved in the installation of over 800 double bunks within the Florence Eyman complex and has seen the rise in staff assaults and inmate on inmate assaults that have resulted in serious life threatening injuries and at least two homicides reported as such. All this bed expansion was done without an increase in the staffing patterns or physical plant which means the number of showers, toilets and other personal hygiene amenities are not proportional to the number of inmates living inside those cellblocks or living dormitories.
A recent proposal to add 5,000 beds on to their growth is based on the fact that Arizona has no empty beds and has one of the fastest growing incarceration rates in the country. Arizona lawmakers refuse to change sentencing laws in order to provide alternatives to prison sentencing as there appears to be an organized effort to promote private prisons inside the state since Janet Brewer, the newly elected governor and interim governor before the election appointed her two closest aides as consultants to the prison industry. The current prison population on February 7, 2011 was at 40,053 inmates. [2]
Phoenix television reporter Morgan Loew, CBS 5 Investigative Reporter, reported that “ Gov. Jan Brewer’s campaign chairman and policy adviser is also a lobbyist for the largest private prison company in the country. Chuck Coughlin is one of two people in the Brewer administration with ties to Corrections Corporation of America. The other administration member is communications director Paul Senseman, a former CCA lobbyist. His wife still lobbies for the company. According to campaign finance records, CCA executives and employees contributed more than $1,000 to the governor’s re-election campaign.” [3]
He goes on to report “The Company’s political action committee and its lobbyists contributed another $60,000 to Brewer’s top legislative priority, Proposition 100, a sales tax to help avoid budget cuts to education. Caroline Isaacs from the American Friends Service Committee, which advocates for social justice issues, said the money is evidence of influence the company has on the governor. Isaacs said private prison companies have been buying influence in Arizona politics for years. The number of private prisons and jails operating across the state shows the result of that influence, he said. Currently, there are at least 12 for-profit prison, jail and detention facilities in Arizona.” [3]
[1]http://polhudson.lohudblogs.com/2011/02/09/correction-officers-union-warns-of-catastrophic-prison-closure/
[2]http://www.azcorrections.gov/adc/divisions/adminservices/Request_for_Proposal_110054dc.aspx
[3]http://www.kpho.com/news/24834877/detail.html
Reprint of Lobbyist, Guns and Money by Paul Krugman
Lobbyists, Guns and Money - The New York Times
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: March 25, 2012
Florida’s now-infamous Stand Your Ground law, which lets you shoot someone you consider threatening without facing arrest, let alone prosecution, sounds crazy — and it is. And it’s tempting to dismiss this law as the work of ignorant yahoos. But similar laws have been pushed across the nation, not by ignorant yahoos but by big corporations.
Specifically, language virtually identical to Florida’s law is featured in a template supplied to legislators in other states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed organization that has managed to keep a low profile even as it exerts vast influence (only recently, thanks to yeoman work by the Center for Media and Democracy, has a clear picture of ALEC’s activities emerged). And if there is any silver lining to Trayvon Martin’s killing, it is that it might finally place a spotlight on what ALEC is doing to our society — and our democracy.
What is ALEC? Despite claims that it’s nonpartisan, it’s very much a movement-conservative organization, funded by the usual suspects: the Kochs, Exxon Mobil, and so on. Unlike other such groups, however, it doesn’t just influence laws, it literally writes them, supplying fully drafted bills to state legislators. In Virginia, for example, more than 50 ALEC-written bills have been introduced, many almost word for word. And these bills often become law.
Many ALEC-drafted bills pursue standard conservative goals: union-busting, undermining environmental protection, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. ALEC seems, however, to have a special interest in privatization — that is, on turning the provision of public services, from schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations. And some of the most prominent beneficiaries of privatization, such as the online education company K12 Inc. and the prison operator Corrections Corporation of America, are, not surprisingly, very much involved with the organization.
What this tells us, in turn, is that ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism.
And in case you were wondering, no, the kind of privatization ALEC promotes isn’t in the public interest; instead of success stories, what we’re getting is a series of scandals. Private charter schools, for example, appear to deliver a lot of profits but little in the way of educational achievement.
But where does the encouragement of vigilante (in)justice fit into this picture? In part it’s the same old story — the long-standing exploitation of public fears, especially those associated with racial tension, to promote a pro-corporate, pro-wealthy agenda. It’s neither an accident nor a surprise that the National Rifle Association and ALEC have been close allies all along.
And ALEC, even more than other movement-conservative organizations, is clearly playing a long game. Its legislative templates aren’t just about generating immediate benefits to the organization’s corporate sponsors; they’re about creating a political climate that will favor even more corporation-friendly legislation in the future.
Did I mention that ALEC has played a key role in promoting bills that make it hard for the poor and ethnic minorities to vote?
Yet that’s not all; you have to think about the interests of the penal-industrial complex — prison operators, bail-bond companies and more. (The American Bail Coalition has publicly described ALEC as its “life preserver.”) This complex has a financial stake in anything that sends more people into the courts and the prisons, whether it’s exaggerated fear of racial minorities or Arizona’s draconian immigration law, a law that followed an ALEC template almost verbatim.
Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population.
Now, ALEC isn’t single-handedly responsible for the corporatization of our political life; its influence is as much a symptom as a cause. But shining a light on ALEC and its supporters — a roster that includes many companies, from AT&T and Coca-Cola to UPS, that have so far managed to avoid being publicly associated with the hard-right agenda — is one good way to highlight what’s going on. And that kind of knowledge is what we need to start taking our country back.
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: March 25, 2012
Florida’s now-infamous Stand Your Ground law, which lets you shoot someone you consider threatening without facing arrest, let alone prosecution, sounds crazy — and it is. And it’s tempting to dismiss this law as the work of ignorant yahoos. But similar laws have been pushed across the nation, not by ignorant yahoos but by big corporations.
Specifically, language virtually identical to Florida’s law is featured in a template supplied to legislators in other states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed organization that has managed to keep a low profile even as it exerts vast influence (only recently, thanks to yeoman work by the Center for Media and Democracy, has a clear picture of ALEC’s activities emerged). And if there is any silver lining to Trayvon Martin’s killing, it is that it might finally place a spotlight on what ALEC is doing to our society — and our democracy.
What is ALEC? Despite claims that it’s nonpartisan, it’s very much a movement-conservative organization, funded by the usual suspects: the Kochs, Exxon Mobil, and so on. Unlike other such groups, however, it doesn’t just influence laws, it literally writes them, supplying fully drafted bills to state legislators. In Virginia, for example, more than 50 ALEC-written bills have been introduced, many almost word for word. And these bills often become law.
Many ALEC-drafted bills pursue standard conservative goals: union-busting, undermining environmental protection, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. ALEC seems, however, to have a special interest in privatization — that is, on turning the provision of public services, from schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations. And some of the most prominent beneficiaries of privatization, such as the online education company K12 Inc. and the prison operator Corrections Corporation of America, are, not surprisingly, very much involved with the organization.
What this tells us, in turn, is that ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism.
And in case you were wondering, no, the kind of privatization ALEC promotes isn’t in the public interest; instead of success stories, what we’re getting is a series of scandals. Private charter schools, for example, appear to deliver a lot of profits but little in the way of educational achievement.
But where does the encouragement of vigilante (in)justice fit into this picture? In part it’s the same old story — the long-standing exploitation of public fears, especially those associated with racial tension, to promote a pro-corporate, pro-wealthy agenda. It’s neither an accident nor a surprise that the National Rifle Association and ALEC have been close allies all along.
And ALEC, even more than other movement-conservative organizations, is clearly playing a long game. Its legislative templates aren’t just about generating immediate benefits to the organization’s corporate sponsors; they’re about creating a political climate that will favor even more corporation-friendly legislation in the future.
Did I mention that ALEC has played a key role in promoting bills that make it hard for the poor and ethnic minorities to vote?
Yet that’s not all; you have to think about the interests of the penal-industrial complex — prison operators, bail-bond companies and more. (The American Bail Coalition has publicly described ALEC as its “life preserver.”) This complex has a financial stake in anything that sends more people into the courts and the prisons, whether it’s exaggerated fear of racial minorities or Arizona’s draconian immigration law, a law that followed an ALEC template almost verbatim.
Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population.
Now, ALEC isn’t single-handedly responsible for the corporatization of our political life; its influence is as much a symptom as a cause. But shining a light on ALEC and its supporters — a roster that includes many companies, from AT&T and Coca-Cola to UPS, that have so far managed to avoid being publicly associated with the hard-right agenda — is one good way to highlight what’s going on. And that kind of knowledge is what we need to start taking our country back.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
An email from Frank Smith about prison contraband and MTC?
Today's news from Indiana: Corizon employee prison smuggling alleged
TO: More recipientsCC: recipientsYou MoreBCC: 1 recipientsYou
FROM:Frank Smith BCC:toersbijnsc@yahoo.com Message flagged Sunday, March 25, 2012 7:41 AM
Dear Friends,
"Frank," he said. "There were more cell phones than pay phones."
TO: More recipientsCC: recipientsYou MoreBCC: 1 recipientsYou
FROM:Frank Smith BCC:toersbijnsc@yahoo.com Message flagged Sunday, March 25, 2012 7:41 AM
Dear Friends,
One of the problems with the for-profits, both operators and subcontractors, is that they pay so poorly, have so little benefits and so neglect background screening and adequate training, that they usually wind up with a majority of unfit staff. They constitute a long parade of temporary employees with marginal aptitude, very little investments in their jobs and a critical real or perceived need for money. Individual professionalism is often seen as a liability by those worried about the bottom line.
A pack of cigarettes inside might sell for $100. Once an employee succumbs to that temptation to make a day's pay, they're "hooked" as a result of compromising themselves. After that, they frequently will bring in drugs, cell phones, even weapons and escape tools.
While no prison can prevent all contraband from getting in, an example of how bad it is was seen in Virginia. The state had technology and a trained dog that enabled it to find cell phones. So it shook down all the state pens and the one private pen within Virginia. It was operated by GEO Group. It found more cell phones in that for-profit than in all of the rest of the state institutions combined.
Last May, I interviewed a murderer in the Mohave County jail in Kingman, Arizona. He was being held for trial on escape, kidnapping, robbery and hijacking charges. He was awaiting extradition to New Mexico to face federal death penalty charges for killing an Oklahoma couple in order to get their truck and camper.
He'd previously done 15 years in Pennsylvania and was doing 30 years for attempted murders in Arizona. He told me that they were real prisons, with little chance of escape. On arrival in Kingman, however, he saw it was so obviously insecure he said he actually felt obliged to escape.
I knew from other unpublished sources that he'd used a cell phone to help him escape from the Kingman for-profit prison.
So I asked him, "Were there many cell phones in the MTC prison?"
"Frank," he said. "There were more cell phones than pay phones."
You get what you pay for. One way or another.
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