ADD YOUR NAME: JAIL MONEY HAS NO PLACE IN SHERIFF ELECTIONS!
John,
Each year, private companies — within industries ranging from real estate to tech and health care — spend millions of dollars to influence county sheriff races in counties across the country.
These donations to Sheriff campaigns are strategic. In return for their donations, companies receive contracts with local sheriff offices to build new jails, administer health care services for incarcerated people, charge exorbitant rates for communication services like phone and video calls, and supply other basic services that should be provided to incarcerated people for free by local municipalities — not private companies.1
John, let’s be clear: Sheriffs are public officials tasked with protecting their constituents, yet they’re taking money from private corporations that profit from keeping people — particularly Black people — locked up. This is an egregious conflict of interest that must be stopped.
GET JAIL MONEY OUT OF SHERIFF ELECTIONS!
Across the country, county sheriffs make more than 2 million arrests each year and control county jails that admit more than 11 million people annually.2 Sheriffs unnecessarily fill local jails in order to keep their campaign donors happy and their companies profits high, ultimately playing a huge role in our country’s mass incarceration problem.
Sheriffs control nearly every aspect of life for incarcerated people. The contracts they make with private companies determine how expensive communication services cost, their contracts with medical providers determine how frequently incarcerated people will have access to their medication and doctor visits.
Rather than provide services that prioritize their communities' needs, Sheriffs cave to pressure from private companies — companies that control Sheriffs’ re-election prospects.
To make matters worse, every year more than 1,000 people die in county jails. These deaths could be avoided, if local Sheriff’s priorities were different. Black people’s futures and safety shouldn’t be for sale to the highest bidder. This is a clear conflict of interest that costs people's lives.
Until justice is real,
The Criminal Justice & Democracy Team, Color Of Change.
References
1. The Paid Jailer. Common Cause.
2. Jail Inmates in 2017. U.S. Department of Justice, April 2019
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