Recent comments

The situation ably described in this article is extremely worrisome, and not only for the reasons the author and quoted experts point out. For-profit prison guards are notoriously poorly trained. Their high rate of annual turnover make that almost inevitable. The corporations' million dollar executive make their money by deliberate short staffing and hiring those employees with the least ability and aptitude and willing to work for the least pay and benefits. They are poorly screened because the corporations have substantial difficulties even hiring enough employees to give even the appearance of adequate staffing. Their background checks are marginal because a sufficient check would represent a considerable expense in an employee who might just last a few weeks. CCA has hired employees in Pinal county, even an assistant warden, who have killed others for revenge, while in their prior CCA employ or while driving drunk. They get employees who are in terrible financial trouble, so are highly vulnerable to augmenting their poor wages by way of smuggling drugs, weapons, cell phones and escape tools. Any review of the corporation's or its competitors' history would make that quickly apparent. Toerbijns is absolutely correct. For-profit guards tend to over respond, resorting to unnecessary force, failing to maintain objectivity. They are poorly trained in police investigative methods. One police sergeant told me CCA employees in his town couldn't make cases on prisoners who had committed assaults, or had been caught with drugs, for instance, because they didn't know or follow the most basic rules and procedures such as "chain of evidence." CCA employees in Louisiana are so inept at keeping drugs and other more dangerous contraband out of its prisons that public prison corrections officers have been detailed to make the sweeps the corporate employees couldn't, and have hauled away masses of drugs, weapons and other contraband. There are a few important issues which haven't been discussed. The first is the fear-provoking introduction of high school students to the police state. I'm afraid I'm smelling a whiff of Nazi Germany where police might have come to a school to check on the ethnicity or religion of students. All those German citizen boys might have been ordered to drop their pants, for instance. They would be encouraged to become informants on their classmates by the thought police. The second is one of liability. What if one of the dogs, with perhaps questionable training, handled by an inept and/or untrained guard, bit a child? Who would be responsible? The school? The corporation? The third is the consequences of these raids. They essentially terrorized almost 1,800 students, marched them around the school like prisoners, interrupted the educative process, diminished the reputation of school administrators in their eyes and probably had a number of false alerts on kids who didn't have any drugs at all. What did the achieve? They found a grand total of three kids possessing a drug that has just been legalized this month in two more states. None possessed enough to be arrested in New York City by policy or Alaska by law. But because of the drug free school zones, CCA-promoted legislation (which applies in various states to substantial distances from the actual schools) the lives of these kids may be over. Their professional and academic careers may be finished. Did the boy with .5 gram of weed intend to get high on it? Did he have sufficient dexterity to roll the world's smallest "joint?" Let me translate how little that was. If he had 50 times that much and put it in an envelope and mailed it, it would only take one 45-cent stamp. If his 15 year old female counterpart had 250 times as much as it is alleged she "possessed," it would have taken just one stamp. In fact, that .1 gram might have weighed less than the stamp on the envelope. It could have been just a few flecks in the lint at the bottom of a pocket or the seam of a borrowed book bag, or on the sole of a shoe. Should the 17-year-old suffer any consequences for her actions? I think she should. It's a terrible idea to go around, especially at her age, like the Johnny Appleseed of hemp. She needs a wake up call, but does not need to get the possible draconian criminal penalties she faces. But the real question should be, I think, is, "Was it worth locking down this school for hours, watching their teachers being essentially deputized in the process and subjecting these kids to being frightened by both legitimate law and order and even worse, to these inept 'rent-a-cop' brown-shirted guards." I think the principal of the school should also suffer the consequences of his own rash and irresponsible actions. I'd like to know what the district superintendent allowed and thought about it. I hope that a majority of the parents of the seventeen-hundred-and-something students who were subjected to this display of prohibitionist fanaticism should express their opinion regarding their dehumanization to that effect, now, and at the next election for school board members, if necessary.