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Friend,
You may have heard about the GEO Group, one of the world’s largest for-profit prison corporations. It lobbies for harsher criminal justice and immigration laws, including laws that explicitly call for more racial profiling, so it can profit from imprisoning more human beings.1
And it runs Michigan’s only for-profit prison, which just reopened this week to imprison non-U.S.-citizens who’ve committed low-level crimes.2
As a Michigan activist protesting outside the prison this week said: “The entire purpose of this facility is to extract profit from detaining people… And after serving months or years they’re all set to be deported anyway. The entire point of this is to cause suffering and profit off of it.”3
Sign the petition: Reform America’s broken prison system and end mass incarceration.
The Michigan prison is intentionally remote, to block access to legal counsel and people’s families—and GEO Group will get $37 million each year from it.4 A lawyer at the ACLU of Michigan explained: “Private prisons are in the business of making money, not ensuring the safety of those who are locked up.”5 Unsurprisingly, many of GEO Group’s facilities lack adequate nutrition, medical care, and legal resources.6
But it’s not just about private prisons.
In the past 40 years, the number of people in prison or on probation or parole has skyrocketed—it’s grown five-fold.
Sign if you agree: It’s time to change America’s broken criminal justice system.
Mass incarceration is driven by racism, deepens racial disparities, and is ineffective at reducing crime or improving public safety. For example, increased substance abuse treatment is far more effective for nonviolent drug offenders.
According to the executives of community supervision (parole and probation) agencies, “one out of four people who entered prison in 2017 were imprisoned not for a new crime, but because of a technical violation of community supervision like missing an appointment or testing positive for drugs” or staying out past curfew.7
Many people in jail are also there without any conviction of a crime; they’re punished for being poor, simply because they can’t afford bail. Desperate to keep their jobs, their families, or their homes, people often end up signing contracts with predatory bail bonds lenders—but then if they fall behind on payments, they may get sent to jail.
These injustices are why I’m joining other elected officials and organizations to support this petition. Can you sign now to show how many people want immediate criminal justice reform?
By signing, you’ll help promote these concrete steps lawmakers can take to restore justice in our communities:
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Eliminate for-profit prisons, because corporations shouldn’t profit off mass incarceration.
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Pass sentencing reforms. Many low-level, non-violent offenses should not merit prison time.
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Fully acknowledge and eliminate the racial bias in our laws and sentencing guidelines.
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Strengthen the parole and probation system, and create more alternatives to locking people up and throwing away the key.
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Properly fund rehabilitation and addiction programs, and end the costly and failed "War on Drugs."
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Eliminate mandatory sentencing. Let judges be judges.
Thanks to activism from people like you, we’re already seeing victories. Just in the past week, all of the banks that loan to GEO Group have committed to ending ties with the private prison and immigrant detention industry.8 And California’s legislature just voted to ban private prisons, including facilities used by ICE.9
But there’s a lot more work to do. Will you take the first step and sign the petition?
In solidarity,
Rashida
1 https://www.businessinsider.com/private-prisons-lobby-for-their-own-existence-2016-8 & https://www.npr.org/2010/10/28/130833741/prison-economics-help-drive-ariz-immigration-law
2 https://upnorthlive.com/news/local/protesters-gather-at-north-lake-correctional-facility
3 https://www.interlochenpublicradio.org/post/3-arrested-outside-michigan-immigrant-prison-opening-day
4 https://www.interlochenpublicradio.org/post/immigrant-prison-open-northern-michigan
5 https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/05/02/private-prison-firm-house-immigrant-detainees-michigan/3654038002/
6 https://www.denverpost.com/2019/09/18/aclu-report-medical-maltreatment-aurora-immigration-geo-group-ice/ & https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/01/history-wont-judge-us-well-letting-companies-profit-immigrant-detention/
7 https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/justice/how-to-end-the-era-of-mass-supervision/37846
8 https://www.forbes.com/sites/morgansimon/2019/09/30/geo-group-runs-out-of-banks-as-100-of-banking-partners-say-no-to-the-private-prison-sector
9 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-assembly-votes-ban-private-profit-prisons-n1054301
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