Unlawful Holding of 10,000 California Inmates by Jerry Brown

Dear Governor Brown,
California is under a court order to reduce prison crowding by tens of thousands. Injury --You are Unlawfully Holding 10,000 California Inmates under order for release due to over crowding. In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prisoners were entitled to the same medical and dental treatment as everyone else in their community. Prisons that withhold necessary care from inmates can be held liable for violating constitutional bans against cruel and unusual punishment. Last year the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison company, received $74 million of taxpayers’ money to run immigration detention centers. Their largest facility in Lumpkin, Georgia, receives $200 a night for each of the 2,000 detainees it holds, and rakes in yearly profits between $35 million and $50 million. Prisoners held in this remote facility depend on the prison’s phones to communicate with their lawyers and loved ones. Exploiting inmates’ need, CCA charges detainees here $5 per minute to make phone calls. Yet the prison only pays inmates who work at the facility $1 a day. At that rate, it would take five days to pay for just one minute. Marriage, Family & Children “When most families in a neighborhood lose fathers to prison, the distortion of family structure affects relationship norms between men and women as well as between parents and children, reshaping family and community across generations. What is perhaps most unsettling about this fun fact is that it is the American taxpayer who foots the bill, and is increasingly padding the pockets of publicly traded corporations like Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group.

 

• Target: Habeas Corpus Upon The United Nations; California SHERIFF Department Heads; Army National Guard; President of the United States

• Sponsored by: Algebra Works