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Sunday, September 4th, 2011

Ohio Sells State Prison to Private Contractor for $73 Million

Author:    
Source:     Reuters/The Raw Story
Publication Date:     Friday, September 2nd, 2011 -- 5:51 am
 Link: Ohio Sells State Prison to Private Contractor for $73 Million
Stephan:   Here is the latest on the new American slavery. The United States gulag is being transformed into a private slave system. The police, also subject to corporate pressure, are being militarized, and encouraged to increase arrests in order to feed the slave system. This is not some mad fantasy on my part but a very real strategy being developed by a collusion of politicians, law enforcement, and corporate interests, and it is overwhelmingly targeted against people of color. There are nearly as many new prison slaves in the U.S. as there were slaves at the time of the Civil War, and it is happening almost without public discussion.

CLEVELAND — Ohio said on Thursday it had gone through with a controversial plan to privatize a portion of the state’s prison system, the latest step in Republican Governor John Kasich’s campaign to shrink government and close the state’s budget shortfall.

Officials said the state had sold the Lake Erie Correctional Institution, an 11-year-old prison housing about 1,500 nonviolent prisoners, to the Corrections Corporation of America for $72.7 million. The state will now pay the Nashville-based company to run the facility.

The privatization of parts of Ohio’s prison system was one of the deficit-closing provisions contained in the budget Kasich signed into law earlier in June.

In all, Ohio hoped to sell five prisons, and raise as much as $200 million, in the privatization process. But the bids on the other four facilities fell short of the state’s hopes and they will remain in government hands for now.

Last week, ProgressOhio, a liberal policy group, sued to block the privatizations, claiming the sales were unconstitutional.

A hearing in the case is scheduled for later this month. In the meantime, however, the judge declined to impose a temporary restraining order on the state, allowing Thursday’s sale to go through.

Carlo LoParo, spokesman for the Ohio Department of […]

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