Honorable Legislators and guests,
Some say Arizona is already a police state as there are advocates who preach such harsh police tactics and weaponry to beef up law enforcement. Some will say this is due to the immigration issues within the state while others will tell you it is to protect the citizenry from criminals and preserve public safety. Others will preach paranoia to justify their boosting of cops at public meeting places and our schools while expanding prisons saying we don’t need more Sandy Hook incidents and this is a means to prevent such mass shootings from occurring in the state.
Nothing is ever said about schools being one of the safest places to be for our kids and now they are boosting the schools to resemble a prison-like environment that in all practical sense duplicates the mannerisms of a prison. In their zeal to crack down on guns and lock down the schools, these advocates for police state tactics in the schools might also fail to mention the lucrative, deals being cut with Para-military and military contractors such as Taser International [a locally situated vendor] to equip these school cops with tasers and purchase other special weaponry, closed circuit television systems and even shooting detection devices or systems.
For the past several years, this has caused a mass transformation of hometown police departments into extensions of the military that has been mirrored in the public schools, where school police or resource officers are outfitted with high tech weapons and other military gear. One Texas school district even boasts its own 12-member special weapons team.
In all reality, there is an underlying current flowing into the topic of the school – prison pipeline that has been described in many different articles today. The ramifications of this concept are far-reaching. The term “school-to-prison pipeline” refers to a phenomenon in which children who are suspended or expelled from school have a greater likelihood of ending up in jail. Sadly, studies have shown many of these kids come into contact with the juvenile justice system within the coming years before graduating.
Not content to add police to their employee rosters, the schools have also come to resemble prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, drug-sniffing dogs, random locker searches and active shooter drills. As a former prison administrator, I can honestly say that most of our state’s schools have become an assimilation of our prisons. Nearly 40 percent of those young people who are arrested will serve time in a private prison, where the emphasis is on making profits for large mega-corporations above all else.
Private prisons, the largest among them being GEO and the Corrections Corporation of America, profit by taking over a state’s prison population for a fee. Many states like Arizona are under contract with these private prisons who sign contracts to agree to keep the prisons full, which in turn results in more Arizonians being arrested, found guilty and jailed for nonviolent “crimes.”
Even the governor has signed on with these profiteers to expand prison beds beyond the number actually needed anticipating a growth in the future based on this projection of making our kids, our future criminals. Only the legislature has the power to change the trend if the governor refuses to change the direction. He has bluntly stated, he will not change his business end with the private prison contractors. He will continue to expand prison beds through privatization.
The influence of private prisons creates a system that trades money for human freedom, often at the expense of the nation’s most vulnerable populations: children, immigrants and the poor.” This profit-driven system of incarceration has also given rise to a growth in juvenile prisons and financial incentives for jailing young people. Indeed, young people have become easy targets for the private prison industry, which profits from criminalizing childish behavior and jailing young people. Lessons learned here demonstrate the state is being imparted is that Arizonians—especially young people—have no rights at all against the state or the police.
The fact is when you promote prisons over school, you not only get what you pay for, but you reap what you sow. if you want a state of criminals, treat the citizenry like criminals like we are doing today. If you want young people who grow up seeing themselves as prisoners, run the schools like prisons.
On the other hand, if you, as an elected official want to stop this school – prison pipeline trend by raising up your hand in objection of such legislative agendas, you could in fact turn this ‘drifting direction’ around. I hope you are a person who still believes in freedom who will actually vote your social conscience with justice, fairness, accountability and equality towards each other and our government. We need to fund our school and drift away from the prison mandated path we are on today.
We can still operate and adequately fund our state’s schools without infringing on our freedom forums. We can selectively assess and evaluate schools for their case by case violence rates and determine adjusting the police’s role at those school and start treating our state’s youth like citizens of a republic and not future inmates in a police state.
Some say Arizona is already a police state as there are advocates who preach such harsh police tactics and weaponry to beef up law enforcement. Some will say this is due to the immigration issues within the state while others will tell you it is to protect the citizenry from criminals and preserve public safety. Others will preach paranoia to justify their boosting of cops at public meeting places and our schools while expanding prisons saying we don’t need more Sandy Hook incidents and this is a means to prevent such mass shootings from occurring in the state.
Nothing is ever said about schools being one of the safest places to be for our kids and now they are boosting the schools to resemble a prison-like environment that in all practical sense duplicates the mannerisms of a prison. In their zeal to crack down on guns and lock down the schools, these advocates for police state tactics in the schools might also fail to mention the lucrative, deals being cut with Para-military and military contractors such as Taser International [a locally situated vendor] to equip these school cops with tasers and purchase other special weaponry, closed circuit television systems and even shooting detection devices or systems.
For the past several years, this has caused a mass transformation of hometown police departments into extensions of the military that has been mirrored in the public schools, where school police or resource officers are outfitted with high tech weapons and other military gear. One Texas school district even boasts its own 12-member special weapons team.
In all reality, there is an underlying current flowing into the topic of the school – prison pipeline that has been described in many different articles today. The ramifications of this concept are far-reaching. The term “school-to-prison pipeline” refers to a phenomenon in which children who are suspended or expelled from school have a greater likelihood of ending up in jail. Sadly, studies have shown many of these kids come into contact with the juvenile justice system within the coming years before graduating.
Not content to add police to their employee rosters, the schools have also come to resemble prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, drug-sniffing dogs, random locker searches and active shooter drills. As a former prison administrator, I can honestly say that most of our state’s schools have become an assimilation of our prisons. Nearly 40 percent of those young people who are arrested will serve time in a private prison, where the emphasis is on making profits for large mega-corporations above all else.
Private prisons, the largest among them being GEO and the Corrections Corporation of America, profit by taking over a state’s prison population for a fee. Many states like Arizona are under contract with these private prisons who sign contracts to agree to keep the prisons full, which in turn results in more Arizonians being arrested, found guilty and jailed for nonviolent “crimes.”
Even the governor has signed on with these profiteers to expand prison beds beyond the number actually needed anticipating a growth in the future based on this projection of making our kids, our future criminals. Only the legislature has the power to change the trend if the governor refuses to change the direction. He has bluntly stated, he will not change his business end with the private prison contractors. He will continue to expand prison beds through privatization.
The influence of private prisons creates a system that trades money for human freedom, often at the expense of the nation’s most vulnerable populations: children, immigrants and the poor.” This profit-driven system of incarceration has also given rise to a growth in juvenile prisons and financial incentives for jailing young people. Indeed, young people have become easy targets for the private prison industry, which profits from criminalizing childish behavior and jailing young people. Lessons learned here demonstrate the state is being imparted is that Arizonians—especially young people—have no rights at all against the state or the police.
The fact is when you promote prisons over school, you not only get what you pay for, but you reap what you sow. if you want a state of criminals, treat the citizenry like criminals like we are doing today. If you want young people who grow up seeing themselves as prisoners, run the schools like prisons.
On the other hand, if you, as an elected official want to stop this school – prison pipeline trend by raising up your hand in objection of such legislative agendas, you could in fact turn this ‘drifting direction’ around. I hope you are a person who still believes in freedom who will actually vote your social conscience with justice, fairness, accountability and equality towards each other and our government. We need to fund our school and drift away from the prison mandated path we are on today.
We can still operate and adequately fund our state’s schools without infringing on our freedom forums. We can selectively assess and evaluate schools for their case by case violence rates and determine adjusting the police’s role at those school and start treating our state’s youth like citizens of a republic and not future inmates in a police state.
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