Free Republic

...The upper chamber voted to pass the bill 28-21 on Tuesday. The measure, which previously passed the state House, now awaits consideration from Gov. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), who has signaled support for restricting the use of private prisons. If passed, the bill would prohibit any person, business, state or local governmental entity from operating private detention facilities in Washington, as well as utilizing contracts with a private detention facilities in the state, according to the bill text.

... Joe Biden on Tuesday signed four executive actions pertaining to racial equity, including phasing out the use of private prisons at the federal level. "We have never fully lived up to the founding principles of this nation, to state the obvious, that all people are created equal and have a right to be treated equally throughout their lives," Biden said just before signing the actions. ...

Bill removes profit motive from incarceration and marks latest clash in state’s battle with Trump over treatment of immigrants The private prison industry is set to be upended after California lawmakers passed a bill on Wednesday banning the facilities from operating in the state. The move will probably also close down four large immigration detention facilities that can hold up to 4,500 people at a time. The legislation is being hailed as a major victory for criminal justice reform because it removes the profit motive from incarceration. It also marks a dramatic departure from California’s past, when private prisons were...

In a week in which it was burnt by at least one high-profile source, CBS News is being accused by another of having used and abandoned him. The Observer has learned that CBS News and Dan Rather made use of Jonathan (Jack) Idema, a former Green Beret, mercenary and rogue soldier, who was tried and sentenced on Sept. 15 to 10 years in an Afghan prison for operating a private jail and torturing civilians he claimed were Al Qaeda operatives. Mr. Idema is now accusing CBS News of abandoning him after having what appears to have been an ad hoc...

The stock market in the United States has been rallying since Donald Trump’s election as president in November, with the Dow Jones Index breaking the 22,000-point mark in August, its third record in a short stretch of time. Yet the extent to which Trump is fueling the upward trend and how long it will last is debatable. Some are already warning of the inevitability of a crash. Either way, Deutsche Bank has discovered at least two crisis-proof investments. In a recent analyst report, the bank said it was bullish about the prospects for a pair of U.S. companies for which...

Three Americans charged with running a private counter-terrorism operation in Afghanistan (news - web sites) are set to reappear in court to face charges they jailed and tortured eight Afghan citizens. Jonathan Idema claims that he and two other Americans and a group of Afghan employees were working with the full knowledge of US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to hunt down terrorists in Afghanistan. Both the US and Afghan governments have disavowed any ties with Idema and his two co-defendants Brent Bennett and Edward Caraballo. The case has shone a spotlight on the shadowy world of security and counter-terrorism in...

KABUL, Afghanistan, July 10 - Journalists remember him as Jack, an eccentric, heavily armed and at times, it seemed, dangerously unbalanced, middle-aged former American Special Forces soldier, who appeared in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001. Surrounded by armed Afghan guards and rumors that he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, he quickly rose to prominence. In the next two years, he was interviewed by Fox and CBS News, helped write a book called "The Hunt for bin Laden" and said he had discovered evidence in Afghanistan that linked Iraq to Al Qaeda. This week, Jack, a convicted felon...

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather is teaching an online course in journalism called “finding the truth in the news” at UDemy. Now, he’s taken to Facebook to say that the media, the American people, and the political class has to call out President Trump on his lies. No, this isn’t the Onion.“These are not normal times. These are extraordinary times. And extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures,” wrote Rather. “What can we do? We can all step up and say simply and without equivocation. "A lie, is a lie, is a lie!" And if someone won't say it, those...

The Donald Trump-led Republican sweep is nothing short of a game changer for the beleaguered private prison contractor industry. Prison contractors GEO Group and CoreCivic (formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America) struggled throughout 2016 as federal agencies began showing signs of ending the private management of public correction and detention facilities. CoreCivic shares are up 57 percent since the election, and GEO shares are up almost 35 percent.

Justice Department says it will end use of private prisons: Report The Justice Department is reportedly planning to stop using private prisons. Shares of GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America were originally halted on the news, but have since reopened, falling more than 20 percent. This story is developing. Please check back for further updates. Click here for the latest on the markets.

The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons after officials concluded the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced the decision on Thursday in a memo that instructs officials to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or “substantially reduce” the contracts’ scope. The goal, Yates wrote, is “reducing — and ultimately ending — our use of privately operated prisons.”

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has said private prisons won’t function under his government as he’s planning to ban them. The Vermont senator has all the needed freedom to do so since, according to his campaign, he has never accepted any funding from prison lobbyists. On the contrary, sources intimate that his main challenger for the Democratic ticket, former first lady Hillary Clinton, received a sum from the lobbyists to the tune of $133,246.

Hillary Clinton reportedly told leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement on Friday she will get rid of private prisons. The meeting with Black Lives Matter comes a day after Clinton was heckled by a protester at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute gala over her ties to the private prison lobby. The former first lady spoke with activists for 90 minutes in Washington, D.C., and discussed the policies she will promote in her yet-to-be-released racial justice platform. Activist Deray McKesson, who was in the meeting, said on MSNBC’s “Live with Thomas Roberts” that Clinton "did come out and say she...

The country's largest prison companies are generating huge profits as the U.S. locks up more undocumented immigrants than ever, and an Associated Press review shows the businesses are spending tens of millions on lobbying and political campaigns. The cost to American taxpayers is on track to top $2 billion for this year, and the companies are expecting their biggest cut of that yet in the next few years thanks to government plans for new facilities to house the 400,000 immigrants detained annually. After a decade of expansion, the sprawling, private system runs detention centers everywhere from a Denver suburb to...

Federal authorities say two men who escaped from a private Arizona prison and a woman thought to have helped them are believed to be in the area around Yellowstone National Park. The U.S. Marshals Service told Fox News on Sunday that Tracy Province, John McCluskey and Casslyn Welch may be hiding in portions of the park that span Montana and Wyoming. Authorities say it's now believed that Province has separated from McCluskey and Welch. The manhunt for the three intensified after forensic evidence linked at least one of the inmates to the killings of an Oklahoma couple who was traveling...

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. – For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses. The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench. In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers. "I've never encountered, and I don't think that we will in...

A jury sentenced a Lakeview man to 10 years in prison for growing nearly 7,500 marijuana plants. Andrew Stever, 40, was sentenced on Monday after a three-day trial in the Federal District Court in Medford.Ten years is the mandatory minimum sentence for anyone convicted of growing 1,000 or more pot plants. In July 2007, officers from several local, state and federal agencies found 7,459 plants growing on Stever's Lakeview property, which bordered Forest Service land. Two men fled the scene, leaving behind personal property and three firearms, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Portland. Physical evidence and testimony linked...

The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation signed two contracts Friday to begin moving California inmates to out-of-state private prisons beginning as soon next month. Deals with the GEO Group and the Correctional Corporation of America will result in the transfer of 2,260 prisoners to institutions in Indiana, Oklahoma, Arizona and Tennessee. The GEO contract will run at $28.7 million a year while the CCA deal is pegged at $22.9 million. The average daily per inmate cost under the agreements will amount to $63 a day, compared to the average cost of approximately $90 a day the state is paying...

SACRAMENTO Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared an emergency Wednesday over prison crowding, a step that lets him use his executive powers to free space by shipping inmates to other states. The move comes five weeks after state lawmakers failed to act on a $6 billion prison building plan Schwarzenegger sought after calling a special session of the state Legislature. That proposal also included involuntarily sending inmates to prisons in other states. "Our prisons are now beyond maximum capacity, and we must act immediately and aggressively to resolve this issue," Schwarzenegger said in a statement. California has the nation's largest state prison...

LA VILLA, Texas - A former police officer about to face trial on drug charges and five alleged members of a violent drug gang escaped from a privately run federal jail near the Mexican border by overpowering a guard and cutting through at least four fences, officials said Wednesday. More than 60 local and federal law-enforcement officers using helicopters and bloodhounds were searching near the East Hidalgo Detention Center, a facility owned by a Lafayette, La., company about 20 miles north of the border. A four square-mile security perimeter was set up around the area during the initial investigation but...