The following statement on today’s Senate rejection of the largest private prison system in the nation is from Julie Ebenstein, Policy and Advocacy Counsel with the ACLU of Florida:
“The Florida Senate averted disaster today by voting down a proposal to create the largest private prison system in America.
“Florida’s prison system needs reform, but private prisons aren’t reform – they deform the process by linking corporate profit to incarceration. The bottom line is that private prisons make money by keeping people in prison when we should be looking for ways to keep them out in the first place.
“If lawmakers want to save money in our prison system, they should reform mandatory minimum sentencing, invest in re-entry programs and re-visit parole policies that feed the addiction to incarceration and throw people into the revolving door that is our prison system.”
Ebenstein was one of the national criminal justice experts in Tallahassee last week to warn Legislators about the risks of privatizing prisons. Joining her was David Shapiro, an attorney with the ACLU’s National Prison Project.
The ACLU of Florida release from the visit to Tallahassee is available here: http://aclufl.org/news_events/?action=viewRelease&emailAlertID=3964
