By Bobby Lee Daniels
REIDSVILLE, GEORGIA — The trend to privatise state-run prisons, which is resulting in legal slavery, began in the south-eastern US state of Georgia four years ago. At that time, the Georgia legislature decided that state-run prisons were an unbearable burden for the taxpayers. Legislation was passed to privatise two existing prisons in south-east Georgia.
During the same term, the lawmakers enacted a new policy which requires prisoners to pay a percentage of all their medical costs.
Should a prisoner become ill and have to use the medical facilities of the prison, upon receipt of even the smallest amount of cash from family members — to purchase postage stamps, pencils, writing paper, toothpaste — the cash is confiscated and transferred to the bank account of Humana Hospital Corporation of America, a medical conglomerate responsible for the administration of all medical facilities in the Georgia prison system.
On May 1, 1997, the state Department of Corrections announced that two new private prisons are under construction in south Georgia.
Allen Davis, a spokesperson for the DoC, told a news conference that the new prisons will each house 1000-1200 prisoners. They are expected to be fully operational by early 1999.
The United States Corrections Corporation will manage the two new prisons. The DoC will supply USCC with prison labour.
To ensure a sufficient prison labour force, the DoC has terminated the jobs of more than 200 teachers, counsellors and librarians. Prisoners in dire need of primary education, and who were formerly attending school for four hours a day, no longer can.
An undisclosed number of prisoners who once attended school are now required to work full time in privatised industry, as jobs become available in Handcock and Johnson state prisons (both under the administration of USCC).
The prison industry manufactures products to be sold on the open market. The products are also sold to state and local governments. Georgia law prohibits any form of payment to prisoners for their labour.
Because the cost of labour is removed, USCC will ultimately realise huge profits from its prison operation. Private industry has become firmly established in the prison business to profit from the suffering of the poor and politically oppressed.
USCC plans to operate its new 21st century slave factories/plantations with the labour of African-American, Hispanic and other oppressed minorities who now make up 70% of all prisoners in the Georgia penal system.
Increasingly, the prison lobby is dictating prison policy in Georgia. USCC is one of the biggest contributors to political campaigns.
The prison industry lobby has tapped into one of the most pervasive fault lines in Georgia politics: the needs and agendas of rural and suburban regions, pitted against politically under-represented cities.
In rural areas, where local economies are devastated by industrial flight, the building of new privatised prisons creates hundreds of new jobs and an influx of capital. No matter that these jobs are created through the imprisonment of thousands of people from the inner cities.
[Bobby Lee Daniels is a prisoner working for improved human rights in Georgia's prison system.]